If you’re ready to grow your interior design team so you can take on bigger projects and protect your creativity, this episode is for you.
Rebecca chats with Dina Holland—designer and founder of Honey & Fitz—about what it really takes to grow your team, grow your business: hiring smart, documenting processes, delegating with confidence, and leading without losing your aesthetic voice. Dina also shares candid lessons from running an e-commerce arm alongside a busy design studio, and why authenticity on Instagram is a client filter, not just a marketing channel.
Words of Wisdom
Educate yourself as quickly as you can about what things actually cost.
Don’t assume you know what a client thinks something should cost. It’s for the client to decide how much they want to spend on something. Take the word budget out of your discussion and call it an investment.
There’s no shame in saying “I tried it but. it didn’t work”… so what, the point is I tried it and there are always more opportunities.
Episode Highlights
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How Dina went from blogger to studio owner—and why team growth unlocked the next level
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The truth about e-commerce for designers (inventory, fulfillment, margins, and expectations)
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Using Instagram to attract aligned clients by being yourself (your unique value proposition = you)
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Why process documentation lets your studio run without you (and eliminates bottlenecks)
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Delegation that works: splitting roles (design, purchasing, project management) and avoiding errors
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Pricing with confidence and reframing “budget” as investment to educate clients
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How to keep your creativity while managing people and projects
Episode Resource
You can find Dina Holland at dinahollandinteriors.com and on Instagram @HoneyandFitz.
Read the Full Transcript ⬇️
00;00;00;02 – 00;00;13;26
Dina Holland
Your unique value proposition is whether you like it or not, tied into who you are as a person. So being real on Instagram, however you want to put yourself out there to the world, that is your uniqueness.
00;00;13;28 – 00;00;25;20
Rebecca Hay
All right. I’m Rebecca Hay, and I’ve built a successful interior design business by trial and error, podcasts, online courses, and so.
00;00;25;20 – 00;00;28;15
Dina Holland
Many freaking books. Over the last.
00;00;28;15 – 00;00;58;04
Rebecca Hay
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;00;58;06 – 00;01;17;23
Rebecca Hay
All right, designers, I’m bringing back a very popular episode. This is an episode where I interviewed Deena Holland of Honey and Fitz. If you don’t already, follow her on Instagram. What the heck are you doing with your life? She is so freaking hilarious. She’s from the Boston area, Massachusetts, and she is just so witty, so smart, and so successful.
00;01;17;23 – 00;01;41;04
Rebecca Hay
And you’re going to love this episode because we talk about building a team. If I remember correctly, in this episode, when I interviewed Deena, she was on vacation. And you can hear they think it’s the cicadas in the background, and it’s so funny. So listen for that. Let me know how you enjoyed this episode with Dina. If you are somebody who is looking to grow your team, even just a little bit to grow your business, you’re going to love this episode with Dina Holland.
00;01;41;04 – 00;01;46;00
Rebecca Hay
Enjoy. Well. Hello, Dina.
00;01;46;02 – 00;01;47;10
Dina Holland
No.
00;01;47;12 – 00;01;55;09
Rebecca Hay
I’m excited. I feel like we’ve tried to have you on the podcast multiple times. And like with scheduling, it didn’t work. I was I’m so excited. We’re here.
00;01;55;11 – 00;01;57;29
Dina Holland
Now. It’s happening. And I’m in the jungle. You’re in.
00;01;57;29 – 00;02;07;11
Rebecca Hay
The jungle? What you guys can’t see is Dina has what I thought was like a faux zoom background, but it’s actually where she is. It’s this beautiful tropical oasis.
00;02;07;14 – 00;02;10;20
Dina Holland
Just off the coast of North Carolina. Oh.
00;02;10;23 – 00;02;28;14
Rebecca Hay
You’re living my dream, by the way. I feel like I should have been born on the eastern seaboard. Like in the U.S.. Like, I love, like, everything. Like Nantucket, Cape Cod. I haven’t any of these places, but I have this vision of what I might and like. Even North Carolina, South Carolina, like, I can’t wait. My sister lives in Boston, right.
00;02;28;14 – 00;02;45;17
Rebecca Hay
And so, you know, and but like the pandemic, I want to go and travel. And I had this big plan for my 40th birthday to go to Nantucket and, like, rent a house and bring, like, all my friends down because I was like, I’m going to wear red pants. It’s going to be the dream. And then I see you.
00;02;45;17 – 00;02;48;00
Rebecca Hay
I’m like, she’s living my dream. That girl.
00;02;48;02 – 00;02;52;25
Dina Holland
That’s not it doesn’t feel like, yeah, I mean, it’s just the grass is always greener, right?
00;02;52;29 – 00;02;53;13
Rebecca Hay
It’s when, you.
00;02;53;13 – 00;02;57;04
Dina Holland
Know, I’m just like in summer. Here we go. We’ve been six weeks. Let’s do this.
00;02;57;06 – 00;02;58;19
Rebecca Hay
Oh, I know.
00;02;58;21 – 00;03;00;18
Dina Holland
Okay.
00;03;00;21 – 00;03;11;03
Rebecca Hay
So, wait, let’s just share for a minute who you are, what you do. For those who don’t know and how we met our first house. Yeah. Tell us their story.
00;03;11;05 – 00;03;33;00
Dina Holland
Yes. Okay, so my name is Dena Holland. I am the founder and principal of my own design firm, Dena Holland Interiors. My business started close to ten years ago with a blog. The interior design and social media landscape was very different ten years ago. If you can have all your babies out there can imagine it was like blogger.
00;03;33;06 – 00;03;54;26
Dina Holland
WordPress was just getting started. Pinterest didn’t exist. I mean, doesn’t that sound crazy? Like Instagram was kind of just starting, like in Silicon Valley, and, you know, you had to get an invite to get on Facebook pages was just starting like Facebook at that time, was still mostly just a way of keeping in touch with, like your, you know, your friends or family or whatever.
00;03;54;28 – 00;04;18;22
Dina Holland
So it was really different. And I started it as really just a way of chronicling, like my own interior design stuff that I was doing in my house. And so I don’t have any formal interior design training. It was just a passion that I discovered and came to as a second career. Yeah. And, at the time I was living in North Carolina, I was living in a planned development which is very common here.
00;04;18;22 – 00;04;34;21
Dina Holland
You know, it was like 400 houses, and they were all very cookie cutter. And I just started doing things in my own house. And when everybody’s house looks exactly the same and your neighbors come over, it’s easy to be like, well, how come it doesn’t look like my house, even though it looks exactly like, wow, and it just started that way.
00;04;34;21 – 00;04;55;26
Dina Holland
It just kind of word of mouth, just small projects. Yeah. And then fast forward, here we are. Ten years later, we relocated back in the Boston area, which is where I’m originally from. And that move, just came at a time when my kids were I had I had I moved back to Boston when my now eight year old was not yet born.
00;04;55;28 – 00;05;13;28
Dina Holland
You know, so those initial years, when you’re a young mom at home, you’re trying to find your way, you’re trying to do something that isn’t all about the babies all the time, that actually still uses, like, your brain. So those, you know, they’re not it’s not like all those initial years. Were you know, we were renovating our old house.
00;05;13;28 – 00;05;33;14
Dina Holland
We I was still chronicling it all on the blog. And I just, you know, I, I always tell people like, I am a product of what my clients pushed me to be, you know, like, I, I tried to not say no to projects. I tried to feel that fear of like, Holy crap, I have no idea how to do that, but I’m going to figure out and do it anyway.
00;05;33;17 – 00;05;42;05
Dina Holland
Those are the projects. Those are the moments that move my career forward, for sure. So yeah, here we are ten years later. We have a.
00;05;42;07 – 00;05;46;14
Rebecca Hay
Your blog was called Honey and. Right. Yeah. And that’s your Instagram handle.
00;05;46;17 – 00;05;56;06
Dina Holland
Exactly. Yes. But and it was the things where I never thought in a million years that it would still be following me ten years later. But here we are. That’s the name.
00;05;56;08 – 00;06;05;28
Rebecca Hay
Oh, amazing. So the house that you live in now, which is so beautiful, though I love it, is not the house that you did when you were blogging. So that’s a different house, right?
00;06;05;29 – 00;06;33;18
Dina Holland
Yes. Exactly. Right. And when I started blogging, I was living in, like I said, like a plan development type of home, in North Carolina. And we moved to a 100 year old needed to be gutted, renovated home. In 2012. Yeah, in 2012. So this is a different home. And that home we lived in for five years before we moved out and did and got it.
00;06;33;18 – 00;06;59;19
Dina Holland
It put an addition on and that whole thing. And, yeah, talk about Trial by Fire, right. It was like, you’re going to learn all of that. And this is what I always tell people, like, if you didn’t go to design school and you didn’t pay for design school, you’re going to pay one way or the other. You’re going to pay and experience and and mistakes and in and whether or not you can then take those mistakes and turn them into learnings and not repeat them in your business is that your education?
00;06;59;22 – 00;07;05;26
Rebecca Hay
I can tell you, even if you go to design school versus pay for mistakes.
00;07;05;28 – 00;07;07;17
Dina Holland
Happens, right?
00;07;07;20 – 00;07;26;15
Rebecca Hay
Learn everything in school. And you know what? I think doing your own had me interested to hear from you, but I feel like because I only have done, like, small renovations to my own house, I feel like, do your own whole house, like, whether it’s a big Reno or a new build, it’s like trial by fire, and you learn so much that you can take into and you can make mistakes.
00;07;26;15 – 00;07;40;10
Rebecca Hay
And when it’s your place, it’s lit. I mean, it still might be costly. But you’re not as hard on yourself. I don’t, I don’t know, I feel like, did you take anything away from doing your own house into design work with clients?
00;07;40;12 – 00;08;02;29
Dina Holland
Yes. You can never trust any communication that has had verbally. Everything must be documented. Because when it hits the fan and it always does, you need to be able to rely on documentation. That was huge. You know, it’s like it’s easy to fly by the seat of your pants when it’s just you, but those things always come back around.
00;08;02;29 – 00;08;23;18
Dina Holland
So planning as much as possible, documenting as much as possible. And then the other thing I learned is you’re only as good as the tradespeople that you surround yourself with. Bottom line, doesn’t matter how amazing or creative your ideas are, if you have trade people that don’t know how to execute them or aren’t willing to put the work in to figure out how to execute it, are willing to be collaborative with you.
00;08;23;20 – 00;08;35;29
Dina Holland
And there’s like, well, it’s at six inches. So I made it six inches, even though clearly six inches is off center. You know, if you don’t have that kind of team around you. Yeah. It’s just it’s more painful.
00;08;36;02 – 00;08;52;06
Rebecca Hay
Totally. You know, it’s so funny because I, when I worked in the industry, when I started, I worked for a designer and he did all these high end houses, and I work with his trades. And, you know, I never had to be that detailed when I specified things because so skilled and they just knew and they would ask the right questions, they would question the drawing.
00;08;52;06 – 00;09;09;22
Rebecca Hay
They’d say, well, I think it should be this. And I’d say, oh yeah. Yep. I agree, you’re totally right. And that when I went out on my own, I didn’t have the same access to the same trades because I was working on lower budget. And so I mistake and to appear that I’d never seen before because I didn’t know to anticipate them.
00;09;09;22 – 00;09;19;27
Rebecca Hay
And the trade that was doing the job, literally, like you say, was like, this is what the drawing said. I’m like, but if it looks wrong, you need to use your brain and ask me the question. So not everybody has that.
00;09;19;29 – 00;09;35;09
Dina Holland
Totally. Not everybody has it. Not everybody is willing to put in the extra time or like takes the pride in their work. You don’t know that, though. In the beginning you don’t know. Just like, okay, I this client hired me and this is the contractor that they had, you know, hired. So I’m now I’m working with you don’t know.
00;09;35;11 – 00;09;56;06
Dina Holland
And you’re even more scary. Don’t know what you don’t know at the beginning. You do know to ask. You don’t know. Like the 95,000 things that could go wrong, you know? And so now, you know, after you’ve done a kitchen a few times, after you’ve done a bathroom few times, you know, like, okay, we’re going to need a filler, you just you don’t know all those things in the beginning.
00;09;56;08 – 00;10;11;29
Dina Holland
So it’s good to get them out of the way. And, but, you know, everybody goes through that process. And so all you can do is take those learnings, try to document them for yourself, try to remember them, and, raise your rates accordingly as you earn them. Yeah.
00;10;12;01 – 00;10;14;15
Rebecca Hay
Oh, preach. Totally. Okay.
00;10;14;16 – 00;10;30;18
Dina Holland
So that’s the value that you bring to the equation. You know what I mean? And you I think it’s designers especially even even more so as women we undersell ourselves. We’re creative. People are constantly like, well, everybody knows that that’s not special, but that’s not how can I charge for that? Everybody knows that. That’s on Pinterest. Everybody knows that.
00;10;30;24 – 00;10;32;00
Dina Holland
Everyone doesn’t know it.
00;10;32;02 – 00;10;46;09
Rebecca Hay
It’s totally own knowledge for granted. And we take our own curiosity for granted. So just because you’re on Pinterest, looking at how high to hang a dining room light fixture doesn’t mean average person is doing that, and they actually value that expertise, right?
00;10;46;13 – 00;10;50;26
Dina Holland
That’s totally true. But it’s that voice in your head being like, well, that’s special.
00;10;50;28 – 00;11;22;23
Rebecca Hay
Except here’s the thing, Diana. Use specifically. Okay, there’s so many things I love about you, but one of the things that relates to what you’re saying now is, I love how you just you just push the boundary. And maybe it doesn’t feel like a boundary to you, but I would think that a lot of designers don’t necessarily have the guts to push forward and do what they really want as far as their design esthetic, because you have such an uncompromising, way about you where you’re like, I lala, I’m designing with color, I’m mixing patterns in, in and I think it’s quite brave.
00;11;23;00 – 00;11;45;21
Rebecca Hay
So how do you like you talk about how we have this kind of back talk holding us back and not charging enough, but how do you have the like? Sometimes the kahuna is to just say, like you, there’s hot pink drapery with because your projects are beautiful. I love color, and maybe it’s this is a question coming from someone who wishes they were doing a little bit more like that.
00;11;45;24 – 00;12;03;06
Rebecca Hay
How like how have you been able to do you have to push your clients or did they just say whatever you want? And then you just confidently say, this is going to work? Like, how did you, I guess, bridge that barrier of not just doing like everybody.
00;12;03;09 – 00;12;19;28
Dina Holland
Oh, okay. This is an interesting question. So I remember years of probably 2015 or something. And I was just like my kids were at an age where they were going to start to go to school full time. And I was like, okay, I’m going to do this. I’m going to do this full time. What’s my brand? What am I about?
00;12;19;28 – 00;12;44;04
Dina Holland
What is my design esthetic? And I asked just on Instagram. I just put it out there and everybody, every response that came back was like color, color, traditional but with color. And I thought, really? Is that how people see me? They see me as being like a colorful designer. I was so just like, I’ll just do what I like, that I didn’t I wasn’t even able to put a fine point on.
00;12;44;06 – 00;13;02;00
Dina Holland
Yeah, I like color until people started saying it. And then I started looking around and going, wow, I guess that’s true. I guess a lot of this, I guess a lot of what’s out there is neutral. I guess that’s that. I was I wasn’t even able to identify that for myself. But once I did and I looked around and thought, yeah, that is what I like.
00;13;02;02 – 00;13;25;27
Dina Holland
You know, I think as designers it’s always a little bit scary to I don’t want to pigeonhole yourself, but, you know, what you put out to the world is what the world views you as. So you have to be really careful about just because you did a really great DIY project with some tile from wherever. If that’s not what you want to be doing going forward, then you need to keep that on the DL.
00;13;26;00 – 00;13;26;20
Dina Holland
Do you know what I mean?
00;13;26;20 – 00;13;30;17
Rebecca Hay
Like you can still do it. Just share it on Instagram.
00;13;30;23 – 00;13;54;08
Dina Holland
Yeah. Like and I sometimes I see I see young designers sometimes sharing things. I’m like girl I don’t know. Just you keep that in some for some projects pay the bills and some projects make your portfolio. And they don’t have to be the same thing because the what you put out there is what people see you as. So I made the decision that I wanted to work in color.
00;13;54;10 – 00;14;15;04
Dina Holland
That’s what I found fun. That’s what I found, exciting. That’s what I found the most challenging, like kind of mixed colors, how to mix patterns. So I started to really get serious about curating the images that I put out to the world in Instagram, on the blog, whatever it might be, to only be things that serve what I wanted my brand’s esthetic to be.
00;14;15;06 – 00;14;24;26
Dina Holland
But then what happens is, you know, you fast forward a few years and you go, I mean, well, I could do neutral to, you know.
00;14;24;28 – 00;14;57;07
Dina Holland
You’re not getting any of those calls for neutral because your entire portfolio and everything you’ve put out to the world is, you know, an explosion of fun color. So again, I would say, it’s just been I, I am a product of what my clients have pushed me to be, you know, and so, like, I have a few projects where maybe we started off with really bold color in the kids room, and then we came down to the, like, more formal living areas, and they wanted to do a little less, you know, so that that’s how I’ve been able to like, you know, bridge the gap into maybe more neutral, slightly more sophisticated things as
00;14;57;07 – 00;15;17;02
Dina Holland
to whether or not I’ve had to push clients for sure in the beginning because they’re like, they’re looking at you like, who the hell are you? We’re going to mix purple and red. What? What are you talking about? You know, It’s hard in the beginning, right? Like it’s hard to stand in that space and be confident and, like, act as if, like, no, no, it’s going to be great.
00;15;17;05 – 00;15;35;26
Dina Holland
So you need to have images to support those ideas, whether they be renderings, whether they be your own house, you you need to be able to, to push the boundaries and to have sort of like that supporting cast behind you that can whether, like I said, whether it be images or whether it be other clients or that kind of thing.
00;15;35;29 – 00;15;39;24
Dina Holland
But. I would say.
00;15;39;26 – 00;15;44;07
Rebecca Hay
When you, when you do projects, you have a rendering as a 2D.
00;15;44;09 – 00;16;00;25
Dina Holland
I I’ve gotten better about asking upfront because, you know, we all get that like, oh, I just can’t picture how it’s going to look that thing at every design presentation. And for years, my answer to that was the great news is you don’t have to picture how it’s going to look. You’re paying me to picture how it’s going to.
00;16;00;28 – 00;16;06;27
Dina Holland
I live and and and and the pictures are amazing. Just so you don’t
00;16;06;29 – 00;16;11;05
Rebecca Hay
And just, like, did that work? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. Never mind.
00;16;11;08 – 00;16;34;16
Dina Holland
Yeah. No, it it can work. I mean, if you say stuff confidently, it can work. But listen, when you’re spending six figures of someone’s money and you’re just saying, hey, just trust me, it gets it gets easier as you get more under your belt. In the beginning, though, a rendering is super powerful. So, yes, I have huge renderings for like large scale kitchen renovations or even just rooms where I’m like, this is bananas.
00;16;34;16 – 00;16;41;11
Dina Holland
And I know it’s going to be great, but how the heck am I going to get these people to see that this bananas is not like images, you know? And.
00;16;41;11 – 00;16;51;20
Rebecca Hay
I that it’s so true. You know, it’s like, if they can’t, they’re hiring you for the vision because they don’t have it. But sometimes there’s an element of trust or they’re not quite sure.
00;16;51;23 – 00;16;52;10
Dina Holland
What you know.
00;16;52;11 – 00;17;02;22
Rebecca Hay
So when you paint the picture for them physically with the rendering or photographs or whatever, then they can say, oh yeah, yeah, okay, I see where you’re going with this. Like go ahead.
00;17;02;25 – 00;17;25;06
Dina Holland
Yeah. And, and I have been so lucky, so blessed that now I’m at the point in my career where I’m working with clients, you know, on multiple homes, like maybe this is their second home that I’ve worked with them on. Maybe it’s their vacation home I’m working with them on. Once you get a few projects with a client under your belt, if those go well and you’re transparent about your process, like it.
00;17;25;08 – 00;17;45;04
Dina Holland
It’s like a relationship. That first couple of dates is awkward, but after a while it’s so seamless and lovely. Like, they trust you, you come up with a crazy idea, but they’re like, well worked last time, you know? So just do your thing. Whatever. They trust you with their finances, they trust you with the vision. I mean, it’s that’s where the magic happens.
00;17;45;04 – 00;18;06;13
Dina Holland
I think that and clients who I have had really I’ve been so fortunate I’ve had I can think of two clients specifically in my career who have been like, no, we really want to go for it. Like, I don’t want don’t bring me anything I’ve ever seen before, like, you know, right. And that is, I left those meetings being like, Holy shit, what am I going to do?
00;18;06;15 – 00;18;11;17
Rebecca Hay
The pressure is really on. It’s like, oh my God, that’s actually.
00;18;11;19 – 00;18;30;19
Dina Holland
Yes, I have left those meetings because like, I’m a fraud and everyone’s going to know, but those are the times when, when you, when you have to be pushed hard like that. And, and I came to I remember that that client, I came to the initial design presentation and it was the husband. My husband said to me, I think this is great, but I think it could be greater.
00;18;30;21 – 00;18;43;05
Dina Holland
And so I left that meeting being like, oh my God, what do I do now? Oh yeah. Yeah, exactly. But crazy it came out, you know. That’s. Yeah, that’s what I do.
00;18;43;10 – 00;18;54;20
Rebecca Hay
No kidding. Okay. So we met. We kind of skipped that part. But you saw it because like when I’m at you high point, I think you said most of your clients you got through Instagram. Is that still the case?
00;18;54;22 – 00;19;12;04
Dina Holland
Yeah. Absolutely. Still the case. Even I mean now Instagram is so far reaching. There’s so many millions of people on it that initially there was a lot of talk and this is the way this happens for all social media. Right. Like there was a lot of talk initially of like, well, are my clients on this platform?
00;19;12;04 – 00;19;32;03
Dina Holland
Like, should I be investing time on this platform or is this all, you know, 20 year old kid? It’s kind of thing. Now it’s so far reaching, like your grandmother’s on a tree. Everyone’s on Instagram now, right? And just, like, copy and paste with whatever new social media network is going to be after a while, when they permeate the culture, it’s just the best.
00;19;32;04 – 00;19;54;29
Dina Holland
It’s a it’s like a Super Bowl ad, like it’s just the best way to reach people, period. So even when I get local clients, they’ll say like, oh, I heard your name from a, you know, a friend and Instagram and or, you know, I got your name from a Facebook group and I talk about Instagram, so it’s become, I think now almost like what it was like, you know, you know, you got to have a website.
00;19;54;29 – 00;20;14;11
Dina Holland
Obviously you have to have a website. You hear about somebody and then you go and check out their Instagram. No, I do that for multiple for like various industries. So it’s almost like the first, it’s like the first portfolio that you’re able to, because more people now are going there than they are going to your actual website.
00;20;14;14 – 00;20;20;27
Rebecca Hay
Yeah. And then they can also get a sense of you and your personality, which is sometimes a little more challenging to convey on a website.
00;20;20;29 – 00;20;42;16
Dina Holland
100%. I’m so happy you said that because I made the decision, I don’t know. I went on to what Instagram Story started. I guess I made a decision that like, I’m going to use this platform almost as, like a weeding out process, and I want to work with people who are not that who are not fun. I don’t want to work with people who are like, we’re not curing cancer, right?
00;20;42;16 – 00;20;58;13
Dina Holland
Like we’re we’re trying to pillows not to downplay what we do because it has a huge impact on people’s lives. It has a huge impact on people’s emotions, how they live at home. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that, like, this is supposed to be fun. This process that we’re going through, it’s going to be stressful, it’s going to cost a lot of money.
00;20;58;13 – 00;21;19;02
Dina Holland
But in the end, it’s supposed to be fun, right? And so like, I, I don’t want to work with people who are too serious or who don’t maybe get my humor or whatever it is. So by the time someone has called me, emailed me, whatever, if they’ve been on Instagram, then they know, like, okay, this is this is how this is what her day is like.
00;21;19;02 – 00;21;33;14
Dina Holland
This is what her team is like. This is what her personality is. This is how she works with their clients. It almost is like a weeding out process, right? You’re not going to call if you are like, I just want to do a black and white room. You’re not going to call if you want some real like super.
00;21;33;14 – 00;21;51;02
Dina Holland
I don’t even know, like truthfully like, yeah, design kind of presentation. I’m not that person that’s going to be like, I was inspired by the Himalayas and this fabulous. Oh my God, I like that. I wish I had more of that like but I don’t I don’t know.
00;21;51;04 – 00;21;57;27
Rebecca Hay
Hey. Yeah. Like you put out a board. What is that like. Yeah a and it’s like this piece of wood is from my travels in Ecuador.
00;21;57;27 – 00;22;03;29
Dina Holland
Like, how are those people? Can they do a Ted talk? Because I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to. Yeah.
00;22;04;01 – 00;22;22;01
Rebecca Hay
Yeah. Love it. You’re so right. Like, for me, I took on Instagram Stories this way. I’m like, I’m just going to put it all out there, like, this is who I am. This is my personality. And you know, it was scary at first. I’ll tell you, because you know, really like saying, like, here I am doing this thing and, and I think you and I are similar in that sense.
00;22;22;01 – 00;22;33;12
Rebecca Hay
So we’ll just say wherever what’s going on, whether it’s personal, mostly professional. But, but then what happened was people who start to follow you, then you start attract like attracts like.
00;22;33;18 – 00;22;34;24
Dina Holland
Right. Exactly. Yeah.
00;22;34;26 – 00;22;50;11
Rebecca Hay
Sort of attracting people who they’re like, Rebecca, you’re so funny. I love this. I love how you did this thing. And oftentimes as designers, we can show more in stories than we show on our feed, right? We can show the thing getting made or the process behind the scenes with our team. And you are, like, exceptional at that.
00;22;50;11 – 00;23;07;01
Rebecca Hay
And it’s funny because before I met you, I don’t even know how I landed on, your Instagram account, but I started following you on Instagram and I thought you were freaking hilarious because I guess we all have a similar sense of humor. And I. And then we were I went to High Point with the Business of Design group.
00;23;07;03 – 00;23;26;18
Rebecca Hay
Yeah. We’re like in this, like meet and greet room late first night and then in walks Honey and Fitz and I’m like, oh my God. I had like a fangirl moment. I was like, oh, I know. Instagram. Because it was the first time I’d met somebody who I only knew through social media, like it was really the beginning of that.
00;23;26;18 – 00;23;38;18
Rebecca Hay
And then like you, it off and I still remember though, you being I want to talk about this actually because when we met I feel like you were just trans not transitioning, but you are adding a new leg to your business.
00;23;38;21 – 00;23;40;01
Dina Holland
Yeah, you’re about to.
00;23;40;01 – 00;23;57;27
Rebecca Hay
And I don’t even know if you told me that. I just remember you would. This is my memory. You may. I would be funny for you to hear this. Like we’d have, like, breakfast. Right? We’ll have breakfast then. You’re like, okay, I’m just going to head up like a, B and C supply and like, you would zip out like the hustler that you are.
00;23;57;29 – 00;24;13;05
Rebecca Hay
And I don’t even know where you went. Right. And you made all these contacts and who knows what you were doing. And then you came back and met the group and we’d be like, looking at art. And I feel like you saw probably 50% more than I did a high point just because, like pure hustle, like on your feet.
00;24;13;10 – 00;24;25;20
Rebecca Hay
I remember being so tired at the end of the day, putting my feet out. And you came and we’re like, having a drink together. And you were like, and here and I’m there and that. And I’m like, I don’t even know half these places. Like, I’ve never even heard the names of these places.
00;24;25;23 – 00;24;43;27
Dina Holland
That was the first time I’d been to High Point that particular trip, and I had it was one of those things where I had, I knew for a few years, I need to go to this thing. I need to go. But it’s intimidating. You don’t know how to, you know, whenever, you don’t do it. So I guess I went in thinking, I gotta make the most of this, right?
00;24;43;27 – 00;24;59;04
Dina Holland
I’m going to go with this group. They’re going to help me figure out the lay of the land. There’s going to be some good, like, learning opportunities. I’m going to meet other designers, which I, I still think is the most valuable part of High Point is the networking that you do with other designers, because we work in such a siloed kind of, you know, solo industry.
00;24;59;06 – 00;25;15;22
Dina Holland
Most of us. But I was really focused on like, I need to take advantage of this time here. So it became clear to me after the first day that, like, if I just stay with the group, we’re just going to go do these, like, you know, lovely little meet and greet kind of things. But I, I came with like a list of support.
00;25;15;23 – 00;25;23;08
Dina Holland
I was like, I need to go see these people. So I’m not I’m not like real big on rules. So so I would just leave and.
00;25;23;10 – 00;25;27;27
Rebecca Hay
I noticed that, like, what do you do to go? You’re just like, are we allowed to do that?
00;25;27;27 – 00;25;29;13
Dina Holland
Are we allowed to just wait?
00;25;29;15 – 00;25;38;19
Rebecca Hay
Everybody else is like following the group and you’re just like, you’re like, I’m just going to go. And I was like, I will see you later. You just like, took off. You had a purpose and a mission, and I loved that.
00;25;38;24 – 00;26;00;09
Dina Holland
Yeah. I mean, like an investment to go to High Point or to do any of these things. So you need to make sure that you’re getting as much out of it as you can. But I had that particular market. I was really focused on finding, some different suppliers because I was you’re right. I was at a point where I was interested in pursuing other, like, revenue streams into the business.
00;26;00;09 – 00;26;32;17
Dina Holland
Right. Because whether you bill hourly, whether you go flat rate, whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. You are one person. You are constrained by just the number of hours in the day. So, you know, there’s a few different levers you can pull, I guess, to make more money on average rage, all of that. But I thought, okay, well, I’ve got a bit of a following here on Instagram, and I just had this revelation one day that no matter how big I ever grew, that Instagram following, what percent of those people were ever going to hire me to do what my primary business is no.
00;26;32;20 – 00;26;57;06
Dina Holland
1% half of 1%. You know, maybe somewhere in there you would think 2% if you’re lucky. So how do I monetize the other 98% of these people that are following me and have expressed via their follow, an interest in what I’m doing and interested in what you know, what I’m creating. But I don’t have the opportunity to actually, you know, hire me in this traditional capacity.
00;26;57;06 – 00;27;19;25
Dina Holland
So I thought about a few things there. I thought about like, okay, what could I do? You know, sort of printable like worksheet, tear sheet kind of things that I could sell in a package for homeowners, you know, paint colors, you know, measurement guy. Yeah, sure. Could I, what could I sell them? Could I pivot and just make it something just for designers, like a B2B kind of offering?
00;27;19;27 – 00;27;37;07
Dina Holland
And ultimately, ultimately, I landed on. I was getting so many DMs every day. Anytime I post a project. Where’s this from? Where’s that from? Where can I get this? And it gets exhausting, right? To tell people like, you can get it through me or, you know, hey, it’s to the trade only, but I can help you with whatever.
00;27;37;12 – 00;27;51;08
Dina Holland
And I was selling things to people that way on a one off basis, very much just like a lot of that. And it got to the point where I was like, I can’t do this. I can’t just be in my DMs every day trying to keep anybody who has, you know, your DMs are a disaster. Like, who am I talking to, flag?
00;27;51;08 – 00;27;52;03
Dina Holland
I can’t, you know.
00;27;52;10 – 00;27;55;08
Rebecca Hay
Yeah. It’s not I can’t search them. It’s a mess.
00;27;55;11 – 00;28;25;22
Dina Holland
Yeah, exactly. So it started off the idea just being I will feature things that I’ve used in projects. So and then and it still is very much that way. It’s just it’s never going to be like Wayfair, Overstock. It’s always going to be a hyper curated version of e-commerce that is specific to projects, brand the things that I’ve seen that I want to use, things that I have used, it’s it’s always going to be that I will say it very quickly became it’s a bit of a labor of love.
00;28;25;22 – 00;28;48;26
Dina Holland
It is a completely different business model. And I think that there’s a lot of these micro e-commerce sites popping up. I’ve seen a lot more designers sort of pursuing that, you know, and I think it’s great. I think that everybody you’re, unique value proposition is whether you like it or not, tied into who you are as a person.
00;28;49;03 – 00;29;10;05
Dina Holland
So being real on Instagram, being what however you want to put yourself out there to the world, that is your uniqueness, right? So like when we get into these, I think we get into these like head spaces. I’m like, oh well, like she’s also my service area, so she’s my competition or whatever. It’s like, yeah, sure, you offer the same things, but you’re different people.
00;29;10;07 – 00;29;28;06
Dina Holland
And this is such a personal business, like you’re in someone’s life for the better part of a year. And I always tell people that clients is when I meet them for the first time, we need to like each other because this is going to be rough if we don’t like each other, you know? So anyway, just getting back to the e-commerce thing,
00;29;28;08 – 00;29;33;07
Rebecca Hay
I think it’s interesting because I have seen, especially in the pandemic, tons of designers.
00;29;33;10 – 00;29;34;08
Dina Holland
Yeah.
00;29;34;10 – 00;29;56;15
Rebecca Hay
Pop up with now I have this curated line and you can buy this and I’m super caring. You were you were ahead of the curve in a way. Like you definitely launched your business before the pandemic. I’m curious, like, is it something that designers should consider? Is it a viable income? Stream? But like you say, it is a completely different business model.
00;29;56;15 – 00;30;14;08
Rebecca Hay
So I imagine it requires different skill sets, different people, different team members. You want to maybe, like, I’m so curious. I also thought so. Yeah. Same thing. Like all these people on Instagram, they can’t afford to or, you know, or in my location to hire me as my services. But then I think about what I think, Holy cow, that’s like a logistics nightmare.
00;30;14;10 – 00;30;15;25
Dina Holland
It is only there.
00;30;15;27 – 00;30;19;25
Rebecca Hay
That’s sort of held me back. But I’m curious your thoughts on that.
00;30;19;27 – 00;30;47;28
Dina Holland
Yeah. I mean, I, I’ve definitely been horror on the e-commerce thing that I am right now, specifically because the pandemic has made everything harder. But the hardest thing about running an e-commerce site right now, especially a small e-commerce site, is just inventory. It is so difficult to know what’s in stock, what’s not in stock, especially if you’re not, you know, our business is a mix of owned inventory and then dropship inventory.
00;30;48;00 – 00;31;01;12
Dina Holland
And I would I would guess I would suggest to most designers out there, considering that that it should be both because, you know, you don’t want to be sitting on $20,000 worth of inventory and the whole world shuts down.
00;31;01;15 – 00;31;05;01
Rebecca Hay
So dropship, just for those who don’t know what that means, do you want to explain that.
00;31;05;04 – 00;31;27;16
Dina Holland
Dropship is basically an established relationship with the manufacturer where they hold the inventory, and if you get an order for that piece, you send them the order and they ship it from their warehouse directly. So you never have to go to, you know, manufacturer XYZ and say, I’m going to buy five of those lights and I’m going to store them in my warehouse because I think I can sell five of those lights, and if I can’t, it’s on me.
00;31;27;23 – 00;31;44;17
Dina Holland
But I already paid you for five of those lights. Dropship is I’m not going to buy five of those lights. I’m going to offer these lights for sale. And if someone buys them, then I will go to the manufacturer and say, hey, I sold that light here. I’m buying that light. Can you send that light to my customer?
00;31;44;19 – 00;32;07;21
Dina Holland
Right. All of that broke down, right? With the pandemic and it’s still broken. So it’s really, it’s really hard to know how much inventory to hold of something. Hey, I okay, I think this versus you should buy 50 units because the units blew out in ten minutes. Crap. Could I have sold 75? I don’t know, could I’ve sold 80.
00;32;07;24 – 00;32;28;11
Dina Holland
I don’t know, could I just so if I had bought 80, what I’ve been holding 30. You know there’s that game and that’s there’s going to be winners. It’s going to be losers. That’s just how you know, whatever retail works. But the dropship thing, it’s like, okay, you’re, you’ve got things for sale on your site and you’re hoping and praying that manufacturers have those things in stock.
00;32;28;11 – 00;32;47;19
Dina Holland
And then when people order them and you have to go back to them and say, hey, that’s a new order, it’s actually not stock in stock for nine months. Annoying, right? You know, the thing I’ll say about e-commerce is that I did not, I didn’t fully appreciate, but I think this is a really important thing to for other designers thinking about doing this.
00;32;47;21 – 00;33;11;04
Dina Holland
So you have these people who follow you. They all expressed like, oh my God, I love that light. I’m going to love that fabric. Oh my God, I love that light. Two here’s $20 for that light is a long gap online. It’s not that long of a gap when you have a personal relationship with the clients. And they hired you for your expertise, and they are sitting there in euphoria with you saying, what light should I put here?
00;33;11;04 – 00;33;33;22
Dina Holland
And you say to them, these one of these two lights is the right one. That’s not a far gap. They already mentally they know you’re there to sell them a light. You know, they know how much a light is going to be because you’ve already prepped them online. It’s really easy to say, hey, I love that light. It’s not that easy to bring out the credit card and go like, yeah, I guess I’m going to buy this $2,000 light from this person I’ve never met online and hope like it’s, you know what I mean?
00;33;33;24 – 00;33;58;04
Rebecca Hay
I’ve actually wondered that because you are selling designer, you are selling designer pieces in the sense that this is not Wakefield, Wayfair pricing. This is not going to pricing like you are selling high end goods. How like are people buying High-End just online? I would have I mean I don’t I’m so yeah this is it seems to me that the clients that have $2,000 to spend on a light probably also can hire and afford to hire a designer.
00;33;58;07 – 00;34;19;03
Dina Holland
That’s exactly right. That’s so you need to have the high end designer $2,000 light pieces on your site. But you also need to have these, you know, $50 basis, because for every $2,000 that you sell, you’re going to sell 300 of those regular basis, because it’s way easier to pull the trigger on those things. And people just don’t have the confidence.
00;34;19;03 – 00;34;33;12
Dina Holland
Like when you’re a designer working with a client, you give them your presence, gives them the confidence to know this is the right. Like this is the right investment for this piece. You can’t do that in an online kind of relationship. You know.
00;34;33;15 – 00;34;38;06
Rebecca Hay
House, you see what you you’ve got. You’re in charge of the whole thing, not just one light.
00;34;38;13 – 00;34;59;23
Dina Holland
Exactly. So it’s it’s a much harder sell online. So just because you have people following you who like what you do, doesn’t mean those people are willing to break out their credit cards and purchase, and nor do they necessarily know how much these things cost. Like, oh my gosh, those are amazing. These are this is $10,000 a day free.
00;34;59;25 – 00;35;06;03
Dina Holland
The average person is not like, oh yeah. You know, that’s just not totally clear.
00;35;06;03 – 00;35;12;14
Rebecca Hay
Like what the what how on earth I was at home sense last week. I could get two panels for 100 bucks.
00;35;12;16 – 00;35;42;18
Dina Holland
That’s. Yeah. So it’s a different business model, requires different skill sets. It requires different team members. But it also, like, don’t I guess what I’m saying is don’t don’t delude yourself and don’t don’t underestimate your power in the equation of selling something. When I get online and I show people things and I talk about them live in stories, they sell at a clip that you can’t fathom, versus if something is just online, you know what I’m saying?
00;35;42;18 – 00;35;50;07
Dina Holland
Like showing them on the scale, showing you holding something. All of those things are important.
00;35;50;09 – 00;35;52;17
Dina Holland
Versus just showing a picture on a website.
00;35;52;19 – 00;36;11;27
Rebecca Hay
So what about those the items that you hold in inventory, like the smaller items that you have? Because I’ve seen you and your stories, you’re like, oh, I’ve got we just got these in or these prints or whatever. But if it’s something maybe not a print that’s light, but like a bowl or, you know, you have lots of things like that that are beautiful, like, how much does it cost you an arm and a leg to them?
00;36;11;27 – 00;36;14;26
Rebecca Hay
And then how do you get branded boxes and like, what is that?
00;36;14;26 – 00;36;31;09
Dina Holland
You had to figure all that out, right? Because at first it was like, yeah, we’re just going to order things and we’ll ship them out of here, out of the studio. And then it very quickly turns out like that’s not an option. I’ve gotten really far in my career just asking myself this question. Okay, this is a problem.
00;36;31;09 – 00;36;49;11
Dina Holland
I’m having a problem. I don’t know how to fix it. Who else would have had this problem? It’s like, take a step back out of your little world and go like, all right, well, I can’t possibly be the first one to ever have this problem, right? Surely other people out there have had this problem and have had to solve it, go about it that way.
00;36;49;13 – 00;37;06;07
Dina Holland
Also, if you are the first one to have a problem like that’s your new business, quit what you’re doing. You just need to fix. You’re going to just figure out how to solve that problem. No. So I thought, okay, we can’t keep propelling things out of here. Shut up. Shot everybody on Shopify or on these e-commerce platforms.
00;37;06;13 – 00;37;38;24
Dina Holland
Surely there have got to be other supporting businesses that have come up to just help people execute these e-commerce sites. And in fact, there are there are, warehouses that integrate with Shopify, where you literally order your products, ship it to the warehouse, it automatically gets, skewed tied into your skew on Shopify. It goes live as long as you have the images listed, like, you know, loaded up with your listings and all of that, and then they fulfill the orders come overnight, they automatically get uploaded to their system.
00;37;38;26 – 00;37;58;11
Dina Holland
They pick and pack it. They update the inventory, you know, they have their better UPS rates because they’re doing this for now. It’s not like, imagine this is just a giant warehouse, like in the middle of the country doing this for hundreds and hundreds of e-commerce sites. So they have that’s about power boxes and packing material and how.
00;37;58;13 – 00;38;07;07
Rebecca Hay
They do it at scale. And they’re, I guess you call them a fulfillment centers. I what their term is that they have like branded like honey stickers and stuff.
00;38;07;10 – 00;38;21;06
Dina Holland
If you can do whatever you want on that side of it, you just send it to them. And if it’s an app that you go through, I mean, there’s a whole bunch of offerings like this, but the one we use, yeah, you just go through and say like, yes, this is this piece is going to need to be bubble wrapped.
00;38;21;09 – 00;38;39;07
Dina Holland
These are the boxes you’re going to use. There’s a lot of upfront, kind of, you know, setup. But in the last year, I have to say it’s a lot of screens for not a lot of juice, just not, you know, and I think a lot of us are feeling that way with a lot of things. But it’s not that people aren’t buying things online.
00;38;39;08 – 00;38;47;21
Dina Holland
Of course, we’re all buying more things online than ever before. It’s just fulfilling those orders just gets a little tedious.
00;38;47;23 – 00;39;09;24
Rebecca Hay
I mean, I yeah, I never I like, I like for a nanosecond I’m like, this would be really smart. And then I thought about all the logistics and all the costs involved in it. And I thought, it takes a special kind of business person to be, like, so diligent and understand and coordinate and the logistics and the operations that I as I’m much more of like the visionary.
00;39;09;26 – 00;39;13;29
Rebecca Hay
And it’s possible a lot of designers like think it’s an easy add on to their sort of.
00;39;13;29 – 00;39;25;26
Dina Holland
Oh, I don’t I won’t have to deal with clients, you know what I mean? I can just sell things in like. Absolutely. And it is that but it’s a lot of other things, you know, to.
00;39;25;28 – 00;39;32;09
Rebecca Hay
You must need to have super nailed down systems then, like, how are you managing? You’re basically managing two businesses to businesses.
00;39;32;12 – 00;39;55;24
Dina Holland
Exactly. Yeah. We talked a little bit about this, you know, at the beginning before we started recording. But I decided as I entered my 40s that this was just going to be the decade of, like, just trying things. And so I feel absolutely no shame in saying I tried it. It didn’t work or I tried it. It’s not I didn’t want to do it anymore.
00;39;56;01 – 00;40;12;26
Dina Holland
I, I just I tried it, you know what I mean? And I think a lot of us have such fear of like, well, what if I do this and it doesn’t work, then what it’s like? And then so what? You know what I mean. So all those things and I said, you know, I thought about doing principles or I thought about doing like B2B kind of I might still do those things.
00;40;12;29 – 00;40;33;01
Dina Holland
I might decide that, you know, I hey, I tried the shopping didn’t work. I might spin that into just like, hey, all you other, like, designers, I want to learn about this. Now. I’m going to teach you what I love, you know? I mean, there’s other opportunities there. It doesn’t have to. I feel like I don’t I’m not as iron grip onto an idea like, no, this must work.
00;40;33;03 – 00;40;43;04
Dina Holland
Any work, it may just provide a whole bunch of learnings. Both of those, like, okay, for to me, for me, the both of them are okay. So this point in my business, you know,
00;40;43;06 – 00;40;59;16
Rebecca Hay
I think that’s a really important lesson though, and I think that sometimes you have to get to a certain stage in your life where you recognize, like, shoot, like it isn’t one thing that I’m going to do. That’s the be all and end all. It’s just things. And so, you know, like Michelle Obama says in her books, I’m listening to her book Becoming right now.
00;40;59;16 – 00;41;14;25
Rebecca Hay
And she talks about how it’s ludicrous that we ask children, what do you want to be when you grow up? As if it’s this finite thing and the destination that once you become an adult, that’s it, and you’re set. And that’s so not the will never change.
00;41;14;29 – 00;41;32;24
Dina Holland
And you can never just yes, absolutely I agree. And yeah, as you get older you kind of realize that right? It’s like there’s opportunity here to like pivot and change and be a few different things and try a few different things. And there’s no shame in trying something and going, yeah, I don’t know if I like that. And that’s the other thing too.
00;41;32;24 – 00;41;51;02
Dina Holland
Like the business is doing fine. You it’s so but at the end of the day is, is how I want to spend my time. Yeah. You know, is that you only have so many hours is that’s how I want to spend your time. Or would you rather focus your energies on something else? Would you rather try a different venture, or would you rather really go like, no, this is what we’re going to do.
00;41;51;02 – 00;41;54;04
Dina Holland
We’re going to go gung ho, we’re going to hire to this, we’re going to, you know.
00;41;54;06 – 00;41;54;29
Rebecca Hay
00;41;55;01 – 00;41;55;19
Dina Holland
It’s all okay.
00;41;55;25 – 00;42;15;14
Rebecca Hay
To go all in on something and it not work out. Also, one thing that I’m learning is it’s okay to go all in on something that’s not what’s expected of. It’s not like, for me, like starting this podcast and starting online courses for designers, because I love you and I love to give back and I love to help, and I just love seeing all this transformation.
00;42;15;17 – 00;42;30;07
Rebecca Hay
At the beginning, I really had a hard time because, you know, I had people in my life who were sort of like, what are you doing? What is this thing you’re doing? Like, just stay in your lane, like stay focusing with your design firm, like, isn’t that where you want to be? And I’m like, I don’t know. Is it?
00;42;30;07 – 00;42;31;19
Dina Holland
Yeah. Does it have to be.
00;42;31;19 – 00;42;56;22
Rebecca Hay
And like, I have had an internal struggle the last couple of years of my my goals are changing my what I thought I wanted terms ago. It’s shifting and I think it’s I finally realize it’s okay, but I maybe, you know, as a designer to for diners that are listening, like hearing all the different paths and different ways that you can try, like, I think it’s awesome that you sell product and you really nailed it.
00;42;56;25 – 00;43;02;17
Rebecca Hay
This is like, hey, if she can do it, I can do it too. Or maybe you’re like, oh, shoot, that sounds like a lot of work.
00;43;02;17 – 00;43;24;08
Dina Holland
But what? Yeah, yeah, but just don’t be afraid to try things. Do you know what I mean? Like, as long I think as long as you have, you know, your finances and you go about it smartly. Don’t be afraid to try things. And I don’t think you’ll know whether or not something is the like, be all, end all dream.
00;43;24;11 – 00;43;50;04
Dina Holland
Unless you try it. You know, I never would have pegged myself as someone who liked educating other designers or like, empowering other designers, giving them ideas or tips or I never would have thought that. I’m mean, I don’t I don’t necessarily like to train people or, but there is a really great feeling that you get from imparting wisdom that you have come to painfully.
00;43;50;07 – 00;44;10;14
Dina Holland
And another you know what I mean? There’s, there’s it feels good to be like, listen, I know you think this is a great idea, but here’s what’s going to happen in two years. Oh, yeah. That’s, you know, and is there a business opportunity there? I think lots of other designers are showing us that there is a business opportunity there.
00;44;10;17 – 00;44;28;23
Rebecca Hay
But also also just because you see everybody doing something, this is what I want my disclaimer to just because you see everybody doing something doesn’t mean that it’s actually successful, doesn’t mean that they’re making money, doesn’t mean they’ve got it figured out the way that you have, like we assume from social media, like, oh, they’re off redesign. Oh my gosh I can’t.
00;44;28;23 – 00;44;58;21
Dina Holland
Wow. So true. You know idea what people’s business situation is. You’re so yeah you don’t. And you’re looking at everyone’s highlight reel and you’re like oh my God they’re doing so great for you. They’re gonna get divorced. You don’t know. You know what I mean? It’s like you, you just have no idea. So I think that social media and Instagram are great for inspiration, but I try really hard to even though I follow lots of other designers, I try not to go to other designers accounts for inspiration.
00;44;58;24 – 00;45;21;14
Dina Holland
And like, I like when I’m in a initial like sort of design planning process for, a project, I try really hard to stay off of Instagram design accounts and all that, because whether you know it or not, those things are seeping into your psyche. And I had this happen to me kind of earlier on in my career where you think you have this great, you know, like original idea, and then you’re on your Pinterest account and you’re like, I saw that four years ago.
00;45;21;18 – 00;45;27;03
Dina Holland
What? Like, I thought that was my idea.
00;45;27;05 – 00;45;30;04
Rebecca Hay
Oh my goodness. Subliminal design.
00;45;30;07 – 00;45;39;13
Dina Holland
Seeping in. Exactly. I mean, listen, there’s nothing there’s nothing that original under the sun anymore. It’s just all reinterpreted versions of things. So it’s not.
00;45;39;16 – 00;45;42;03
Rebecca Hay
That how you put it together that things. Yeah.
00;45;42;06 – 00;45;50;24
Dina Holland
So it’s not like, oh, stay off Instagram because you’re so original. No, I’m not saying that at all. So you design.
00;45;50;26 – 00;45;58;11
Rebecca Hay
Sorry. Yeah, yeah. So you have this design business, but you’re doing, like, massive projects from what I can tell. Like you’re in the Cape is I’m what they call it.
00;45;58;11 – 00;46;01;04
Dina Holland
The cat on the Cape. Yes.
00;46;01;07 – 00;46;25;24
Rebecca Hay
Doing, like, big mansions. And you have this other business where you’re selling goods online. Like, how many people do you have working for you? What has that been like? Like, how do you grow a team? Yeah. Are you doing everything, like, are you still doing all of the design? Like, I see you when you’re physically there with your clients all the time and I think, oh my goodness, how is this woman you, me right like to do this?
00;46;26;01 – 00;46;53;11
Dina Holland
I, I am still involved in all the design 100%. Every design presentation, every client email comes through my inbox, you know, all of that. Will always be that way. I haven’t really decided as a business owner, if I want it to always be that way, because I’m conscious that I’m at sort of this precipice of I can grow this business, and doing so will require me to grow this team.
00;46;53;11 – 00;47;08;26
Dina Holland
And even just right now, there’s only I have two other people who work for me full time. I have a lot of contractors that I use. I can’t tell, like if you are starting out and you’re like, I’m not sure how to grow this. Contractors are your best resource, I think.
00;47;08;28 – 00;47;11;12
Rebecca Hay
Yeah. Freelance designers, people who can come in.
00;47;11;14 – 00;47;36;01
Dina Holland
That’s really keepers are all of those things that you’re like, I’m wearing too many hats. You can hire out and have other people. But anyway, I could I could grow the business. I could bring on more clients. We have way more inquiries than we’re able to take on. We have a waitlist. I can do all of those things, but that would change my role in the business from design to manager.
00;47;36;01 – 00;48;10;04
Dina Holland
And. And as soon as you bring somebody on, that happens anyway. Right. Like more of my day now is spent managing than it is designing. And sometimes that’s okay. And some days I’m like, And I get to play with fabrics today, you know? But you have to, you have to really, like, take a hard look in the mirror and realize that your value to the business is no longer in the nitty gritty detail of the design, because that’s something that somebody else can be doing and that your value is in bringing in new business.
00;48;10;04 – 00;48;25;05
Dina Holland
It’s in developing processes for these employees to fall. It’s that is your back. That’s a hard transition to make, though, when you’ve been working by yourself and you’ve had a hand in everything. It’s a hard transition. I think for a lot of people because initially you’re like, oh, they’re not going to do it exactly how I do it.
00;48;25;05 – 00;48;52;07
Dina Holland
What if they do it wrong? But you’ll get over that because you’ll be like, oh my gosh, they’re doing the thing I used to do, and now I get to be doing something else. Well, do you get over that? And our mistakes, you know, you learn from or whatever, but more so what I’m talking about is the conscious decision of like, okay, I my job now is going to be managing these people and getting them to be better designers and helping them in your career versus me figuring out what the right wallpaper to match this paint, swatch it.
00;48;52;07 – 00;48;53;16
Dina Holland
You know what I mean?
00;48;53;19 – 00;49;14;29
Rebecca Hay
Yeah. And you know, it’s of course, I definitely tell me. I but it’s funny, it’s it’s like I think this happens in many industries and not just when you’re an entrepreneur, but you have a craft, you’re good at something. You get promoted to manager right. And that doesn’t mean you know or want to manage people and oversee what they’re doing.
00;49;15;06 – 00;49;38;05
Rebecca Hay
But you’re right. It is a necessary element for growth. And so I found myself there, you know, a couple of years ago where I was I don’t I like I want to grow and I always had this vision of this big firm, but I felt like all I was doing was like hand-holding, managing and doing a bit of design, but just not enjoying that side of it to the point where I was like, do I even want to do this anymore?
00;49;38;09 – 00;49;55;07
Rebecca Hay
Yeah, because. So in that side of things. And so I think you just take a step back and sort of think about where you, like you just said, like where for me it was like, okay, where do I see this going? Me this isn’t going where I thought it was initially going. Yeah. Not okay. And what does that mean for me?
00;49;55;09 – 00;50;01;02
Rebecca Hay
Yeah, but you only have two employees. I guess you have a lot of contract people on contract too.
00;50;01;05 – 00;50;28;13
Dina Holland
Yeah, like I have, like, I don’t do any of my own renderings, you know, we do floor planning and like, CAD drawings and all of that. But on big projects, I outsource that, you know, for the for the e-commerce stuff, all of that, the fulfillment of all that is outsource. We have a bookkeeper on staff, you know that or as a contractor, I tried to hire to my weaknesses and I know I am a creative person, but I’m not super organized.
00;50;28;13 – 00;50;50;22
Dina Holland
So the very first person I brought on is a design assistant. She’s insanely organized. She’s a superstar. She’s now a junior designer. She’s super capable. So now it’s like, okay, well, her needs when she first came on are completely different than what her needs are now. Now, what she needs is she needs more guidance for me and processes to follow, but she doesn’t need me to hold her hand for everything.
00;50;50;29 – 00;51;23;01
Dina Holland
So now my job is to give her a solid set of processes to follow so that I am not the bottleneck, because that that that very quickly happens, right? It’s like if every designer’s reading has to come to you and your kid is sick and you’re home now, suddenly you’re the bottleneck to your business. You’re you’re the one that is preventing that project from going out to presentation or whatever it is, you know, so coming up with what those processes are, because I always want to I want the people who work for me to feel empowered and like, are learning, but also support it.
00;51;23;01 – 00;51;26;29
Dina Holland
Like, I’m not just out here trying to figure things out on my own kind of thing, you know?
00;51;27;02 – 00;51;43;22
Rebecca Hay
Yeah, I totally get it. I feel like it’s taken me a long time to learn that. I was just in a meeting yesterday. We brought on a new an intern for social media at Social Media Coordination and like all that. And I said to my team, I was like, we need to like we need to give him like what is expected weekly.
00;51;43;28 – 00;52;02;05
Rebecca Hay
I have processes in my design business, the marketing. I’ve never really developed anything like fear and I winging it. Okay, you do this, I’ll do that and divide and conquer. And so I realized we need set processes for him so that he can say, okay, like I need to like do the analytics like a checklist of here’s what’s expected of you.
00;52;02;05 – 00;52;10;20
Rebecca Hay
Here’s where you can find some of the answers. So you’re right. So because I’ve been the bottleneck when I first started hiring, it was like people were just sort of waiting for.
00;52;10;23 – 00;52;11;13
Dina Holland
Exactly.
00;52;11;15 – 00;52;11;29
Rebecca Hay
And then you’re.
00;52;11;29 – 00;52;14;29
Dina Holland
Saying to people while they’re waiting for.
00;52;15;01 – 00;52;18;11
Rebecca Hay
Exactly. And then you’re like, well, I’ll just do it myself. It’s much easier.
00;52;18;17 – 00;52;40;26
Dina Holland
So I know. Right? And then that’s and then you’re caught in. You are the bottleneck. Exactly. So I, I think that I wish I had done this earlier in my business, but when you’re by yourself, you don’t put as much of an like when you’re working by yourself. You have a process. It’s just all in your head. You haven’t taken the time to document that process.
00;52;40;26 – 00;52;57;00
Dina Holland
And you go, oh, it’s fine. I know how to do it. I know how to do it. But even I would encourage anyone listening, even if you work by yourself, take the time to write out like literally just open a Google document and just write out, okay, how does this business work from start to finish? How does it work?
00;52;57;00 – 00;53;14;20
Dina Holland
Someone calls me, someone contacts me. Do I track leads? Should I maybe I should, maybe I should say like how many people are contacting me every month and where are they coming from? And if I did, I send them a proposal. Did they ultimately sign just that? Right there is the beginnings of knowing what does your lead pipeline look like?
00;53;14;20 – 00;53;39;02
Dina Holland
And am I going to be too busy in six months? Am I going to like it’s thinking through those like little, little pieces of what your business is, even though it doesn’t seem to be important when it’s just you. It is it’s like the backbone of your business. And it is what will either determine that you’ll be able to seamlessly bring on other people or really struggle through that process, especially in the beginning.
00;53;39;04 – 00;54;04;10
Rebecca Hay
It’s also a powerful exercise just to see the volume of tasks that you do do using. Yeah, it’s an extra that’s actually an exercise in power of process, because that’s sort of how I figured it out. It’s like literally you need to write down from start from scratch, from start to finish, what it is that you do to, to start and complete a project and then you can look at it and that’s when you can kind of say, okay, well, hey, maybe I don’t need to do these four things, right.
00;54;04;13 – 00;54;06;17
Rebecca Hay
Somebody else can do it right.
00;54;06;19 – 00;54;30;28
Dina Holland
All of the things when I decided I needed to hire, when I, when I did, similar to what you did, listing out tasks and going, okay, all of these things that I find annoying that I’m just like, oh, I have to like set this client up in this new process system and like all of those things that you find annoying, you find annoying because they become second nature to you, but they’re not second nature to someone, like coming out of school and hungry to learn.
00;54;31;00 – 00;54;51;22
Dina Holland
So you can take the things that you find annoying and turn them into learning opportunities for other people. And now you’ve just freed up that space in your day to do other things. Now, I will tell you from firsthand experience knowing what to do with that freed up time is it is is the trick because suddenly you feel like, oh, you’re doing that.
00;54;51;22 – 00;55;14;08
Dina Holland
Okay. All right. Oh, you’re doing that. Okay. With like, a you’re right. Like something you could that’s when you have to pivot and go, like, okay, if you’re going to do that, then I’m going to work on documenting what the photoshoot process is supposed to be. Right? I’m going to work on sending proposals. I’m going to work on some templated emails, because I seem to be sending the same goddamn email 35 times a week, you know?
00;55;14;10 – 00;55;20;27
Rebecca Hay
Yes, I know, it can be tempting to to be like, oh, you’re doing that and you’re doing that thing, and I go for lunch.
00;55;21;04 – 00;55;46;01
Dina Holland
Nice. Look at that. Let’s do that. Oh, goods. Exactly. But that when you get the space, you’re not going to know what to do with the space unless you unless you’ve documented, like, you’re all the things. And then you get to the point where you go, here are the things that only I can do. So here is my unique like the this is the value I bring to this business right now, because she’s not going to do new business proposals or she’s not going to do whatever that might be you.
00;55;46;03 – 00;56;07;15
Dina Holland
It becomes clear, like these are the tasks where I add the most value. These are only my tasks. I don’t need to be doing those other things. Those are other opportunities that somebody else can be learning from that I’ve done a million times the hardest part for me that I’m having letting go of is the design, because I will see my junior designers pulling together schemes that I want to be like, what’s that?
00;56;07;15 – 00;56;27;00
Dina Holland
What do you feel like? What are you working? I don’t want to be over here like I like their designer. No, I don’t want to be reconciling freight on an like with it with the accountant. I want to be doing that. But that’s not where you add value to the business anymore. Doesn’t mean you can’t. And I think that that’s just as powerful.
00;56;27;05 – 00;56;43;05
Dina Holland
You can say to yourself, okay, it’s not where I add value, but I’m not happy at the end of the week if I don’t spend some portion of my week in a creative capacity. So even though I know I needed to be doing X, Y, and Z like I want, I still want to leave time in my schedule to be able to do that.
00;56;43;07 – 00;57;00;21
Dina Holland
So in my business, the way I’ve been able to set that up is I give my junior designers the freedom to do all of the initial like, you know, okay, will we start with floor plans? They do the floor plans, and then we set up time. I review the floor plans with them and I say, okay, these are the floor plans that we’re going to present to the client.
00;57;00;21 – 00;57;16;12
Dina Holland
I think this is the right direction. But they had the initial like they had the freedom to, you know, play around and go. We could do this. We can let them kind of flex their creative muscles a bit. Right. And then it’s all right. Well, now we know we need a section, a coffee table about this big three end tables, whatever it might be.
00;57;16;15 – 00;57;42;23
Dina Holland
You now take the first pass. You paint an end to end tables. You put in ten or whatever it might be. Set up a time with me and we will review those together. So I still have a hand in what the, you know, overall sort of creative vision is. And they were able to, like I said, like sort of, you know, get some creative, exercises under their belts as far as, like, you know, by the time someone is doing that and you’ve given them the flexibility and the freedom to do that, they know your design esthetic.
00;57;42;23 – 00;57;50;04
Dina Holland
They know, like my junior designers know, Jean is not going to like that.
00;57;50;06 – 00;57;53;03
Rebecca Hay
It’s too beige right there.
00;57;53;05 – 00;58;10;10
Dina Holland
Or they’ll come back in the design center with a wallpaper and be like, I know this is crazy, but you’re going to love it. And they’ll hold it up and I’ll be like, oh my God, I do love it. You. So that’s where the magic happens, right? But have you got to keep people happy and keep people feeling like, there’s a reason to stay with you?
00;58;10;12 – 00;58;28;24
Dina Holland
And I think as a small business, you know, you don’t have to deal with this in Canada. But in the small business in the States, like, there’s a lot of expenses. There’s like, there’s health insurance coverage there. There’s a lot of things that you have to think through when you bring somebody on. It’s a giant investment. There are going to be things that you can’t compete on as a small business.
00;58;28;24 – 00;58;43;14
Dina Holland
You’re not going to be able to, you know, have the highest salary or have the best benefits or whatever. But there are other things that you can offer people. So I’ve had to get creative, about all right. I’ve got this amazing talent. I want to keep it. I want to keep it forever. How do I keep were happy.
00;58;43;17 – 00;58;57;18
Dina Holland
Yes, of course you want to look at salary, but I think you know your superpower as a unique as a business, a small business owner is. You can say to someone, what is it that you value? What do you want? Do you want to work from home few days a week? Great. Let’s figure out how you can work from home three days a week.
00;58;57;20 – 00;59;07;26
Dina Holland
You know what should we do summer Fridays from like, Labor Day to Memorial Day? Yeah, great. Let’s do that. You know what I mean? Like, there are other ways that you can add value to someone’s life that aren’t just,
00;59;07;29 – 00;59;09;02
Rebecca Hay
Not just financial.
00;59;09;05 – 00;59;22;03
Dina Holland
Just financial. Right. And as a small business owner, you need to think about those things because, you know, very quickly it becomes like, all right, well, I’m not I can’t keep this person to 25% a year. Yeah, but how do I keep them happy?
00;59;22;05 – 00;59;39;19
Rebecca Hay
But you know what I think? And somebody else told me this once. It was my old operations manager, and she was she retired after she worked for me. So it was, you know, had life experience let up. You know, she but she said to me, she’s like Rebecca, like, it’s not just like, you’ve got to think, what can we do for people?
00;59;39;22 – 00;59;50;14
Rebecca Hay
Is it like a lunch? Is it Summer Fridays? Like there are things that people value that will make them almost as happy, if not happier. Sometimes. Then more money? Absolutely. That balance.
00;59;50;16 – 00;59;51;08
Dina Holland
Yep.
00;59;51;11 – 00;59;52;15
Rebecca Hay
Yeah, totally.
00;59;52;18 – 01;00;15;08
Dina Holland
And those things are different for everybody. You know, like I have one, woman who she drives really, really far. So she works from home twice a week. So it’s like each, each individual person’s, you know, I, I don’t know, but I’ve had, young moms work for me. It’s like, well, what the value there is, they just want flexibility in their day.
01;00;15;10 – 01;00;50;18
Dina Holland
So I would say in the beginning of my business, when I first started exploring the idea of working with contractors, the stay at home mom market is like the largest untapped market of talent, I think, happening under it, because you have all of these super educated, smart. And I’m just saying women because, you know, a lot of women decide that they’re going to take a break from their careers and they’re going to stay home, and then maybe they can’t go back to that career because it’s just they don’t have the flexibility in their day to work 9 to 5 and take a train both ways.
01;00;50;18 – 01;01;07;29
Dina Holland
And, you know, they want to work, they want to use their brains, but they can’t work in that sort of traditional sitting in a cubicle for ten hours a day model. There are so many women staying at home who would be happy to work 4 or 5 hours a day, but they need to be able to work those 4 or 5 hours.
01;01;07;29 – 01;01;11;08
Dina Holland
When they can work those 4 or 5 hours, that’s value.
01;01;11;11 – 01;01;14;05
Rebecca Hay
Right? So you know, that’s value.
01;01;14;05 – 01;01;30;08
Dina Holland
It’s like if you can come up with tasks that someone needs to do and you don’t care when they get done, there’s so many people out there talented, intelligent, looking to work, but they just, you know, and that’s valuable to them. Like, okay, I will stay on this at this job because I can work on my own schedule.
01;01;30;11 – 01;01;48;05
Rebecca Hay
Yeah, I mean, it has to work for you. But I think if this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s certainly taught me that I do not need to have my team in the office five days a week, 9 to 5. Think we can be flexible. And yes, I want to have some in-person contact for sure, but it’s not necessarily to get the job done.
01;01;48;07 – 01;02;04;12
Dina Holland
It’s not necessary. What is necessary is thinking through the processes that are going to keep that motor going when you’re not all in the office, because for us, we are so collaborative as a team when we’re in that same in like office environment and it’s so easy to be like, oh, hey, you know, we look good with that.
01;02;04;12 – 01;02;24;09
Dina Holland
Is that going to happen when you can’t do that because you’re not physically there together? In the absence of having that physical time together, it’s like what? How can you use technology to move things forward? How can you be documenting things? How can you make it so everybody knows on any given day what they’re working on? Like, you know, there’s a lot of,
01;02;24;11 – 01;02;25;04
Rebecca Hay
Yeah.
01;02;25;06 – 01;02;35;08
Dina Holland
There’s a lot of stuff like that that we had to very quickly pivot and learn as it was, but it has made me more aware of,
01;02;35;10 – 01;02;53;08
Dina Holland
Someone said to me, run your business like you’re running, like you’re starting a franchise. And I remember the time to get that does that. But if you even as you’re just one person with another person working with you, if you can think through. Okay, I got hit by a bus tomorrow, how would someone know what to do and document those things?
01;02;53;08 – 01;03;10;02
Dina Holland
It sounds so. I know it sounds so boring and so true, but like that is the power. Because then it’s not like, oh, I need to hire someone, but I still have time and how am I going to train them? How are they going to know what to do? If you documented things, that entire process becomes simple because it’s like, okay, here’s your handbook of how we do things here.
01;03;10;10 – 01;03;23;21
Dina Holland
Of course, they’re gonna have questions, you know, like that’s natural, but, run your business like you’re starting a franchise. And what would that mean if a franchise, a brand new franchise owner came on? It was like, well, how do we do this? How does the sausage get made here?
01;03;23;23 – 01;03;27;22
Rebecca Hay
Does this franchise are you run into, you know.
01;03;27;25 – 01;03;28;24
Dina Holland
01;03;28;26 – 01;03;40;24
Rebecca Hay
So, I mean, hello, I developed an entire course about process because I’m so freaking passionate about it, because it has been a game changer in my business and we’re still working on it. It’s not like I’ve got it all figured out. I’m still.
01;03;40;24 – 01;03;42;16
Dina Holland
I don’t think it’s ever done. I don’t think it’s.
01;03;42;16 – 01;03;44;14
Rebecca Hay
A living, breathing thing.
01;03;44;14 – 01;04;00;03
Dina Holland
Right? Yeah. I think the power of process is and you’re a you were on this process where a lot of I’m talking about like in the last year I’ve been like, okay, I’ve really got to figure this out. Like, I know I can’t just do this on our own anymore. We got to really, like, puts the pen to paper.
01;04;00;06 – 01;04;18;26
Dina Holland
I think the power of process is that it is iterative, it is always changing, and the power of process is going back into the process and adding what you’ve learned. So just because you wrote it down and been like, this is how we do things, don’t be afraid to try things differently. And if it works better, integrate that into your process.
01;04;18;26 – 01;04;19;08
Dina Holland
Right?
01;04;19;14 – 01;04;36;21
Rebecca Hay
Absolutely. We change things like literally weekly. I think with my design we we have like milestone checkpoints now so that it’s like you check in. Same thing is you like you check in with me. Let’s let’s review the plans. Let’s come up with the best solution because I’ll see things that they don’t see, but they still get the opportunity to draw it out based on what we’ve talked about.
01;04;36;24 – 01;04;54;19
Rebecca Hay
And then we have a checkpoint to review, fabrics or salad. And it was just some initial selections, and there was something that we realized, like, shoot, you know, we really need to add this to our process. Like we need to add, I don’t remember it was like sending a card to thank the client for hiring. You know, what we used to do that after the consultation.
01;04;54;19 – 01;05;10;04
Rebecca Hay
But it feels funny because snail mail takes longer and they don’t get it right away. And so let’s wait and send the card. Let’s send a thank you email after the consultation, and let’s send the card after they’ve signed on, because they’ve just given us all this money. It like can’t go into a sauna and we use a sauna to track it.
01;05;10;04 – 01;05;29;11
Rebecca Hay
Because the thing is, I used to use Google Docs, but then it’s like it’s so because it’s so changing and living and breathing. We now use a sauna and we have like every single task in there. So we go in like, hey, go in and change the template. It’s literally happening on a weekly basis for us because, you know, and also, I think as your business grows and changes.
01;05;29;14 – 01;05;30;13
Dina Holland
Right, that.
01;05;30;15 – 01;05;32;20
Rebecca Hay
More people you need more processing.
01;05;32;22 – 01;05;51;26
Dina Holland
Well, right. So really close to beginning the pandemic, I hired, someone who she works as an assistant, but she also works as a purchasing manager. So in our process, right, we’ve done the design. The client has approved it. My junior designer turns everything into piles, and then it gets passed off to purchasing, and she just handles purchasing.
01;05;51;26 – 01;06;20;09
Dina Holland
That’s literally all she does. Well, that was a change in the process because that used to be one job, one person used to do all of that. Right. We split that into two tasks, right. So the person who was originally doing everything, yes. Now some of her time has gotten freed up. But again, the things that she was doing naturally in her head because it was just her doing it, we’ve had to take a step back and go like, okay, well, you know, and it happens because mistakes the first of the first time out of the gate, mistakes happened.
01;06;20;09 – 01;06;37;03
Dina Holland
It was like, okay, how do we keep that from happening again? That wouldn’t have happened if it was just you doing it by yourself. But that’s not a reason to keep doing it that way. Just because a mistake wouldn’t have happened. What that means is you didn’t document it well enough for the person. The new person is doing it to know what to look for, right.
01;06;37;06 – 01;06;55;05
Dina Holland
So I absolutely like as as the job changes, as you grow, as you add more tasks and staff like, and inevitably you have to start splitting off, like, who’s responsible for what that all comes back to, like, well, what’s the process? What is the off? Who’s doing it? Yeah. What is the buck? Stop. You know.
01;06;55;08 – 01;07;00;13
Rebecca Hay
Yeah it’s you’re right. It’s once you see mistakes which is not very encouraging to hear but it’s true.
01;07;00;20 – 01;07;00;27
Dina Holland
Yeah.
01;07;01;00 – 01;07;08;27
Rebecca Hay
Like, why did that lamp arrive in the wrong size? I mean, what happened. And then we had a meeting and we’re like, let’s go back, okay? The person who.
01;07;08;29 – 01;07;09;15
Dina Holland
Saw.
01;07;09;17 – 01;07;22;14
Rebecca Hay
The book was supposed to send it to the designer for approval. Okay. So the does it did the designer approve the purchase order? Well, they did okay. So then I guess the designer missed that the skew didn’t match the description.
01;07;22;15 – 01;07;26;01
Dina Holland
Oh, there’s so many times the skew is one thing. Yeah.
01;07;26;03 – 01;07;44;11
Rebecca Hay
Yep. And you know, you’re like the designer’s looking. So I’m like okay, how do we fix this? So the next time we go to order something, it doesn’t happen. And so we’re always tweaking. But you know, that’s part of business growth I think too for a lot of people who are starting on their own. And if you’re listening to this designer and you’re like, it’s just me.
01;07;44;13 – 01;07;55;04
Rebecca Hay
Like, I can’t imagine having processes. It’s not something that I had when I started out, just like you’re saying, you know, it’s not something you had. But I think if you can start with baby steps with the little things.
01;07;55;04 – 01;07;55;29
Dina Holland
Yeah.
01;07;56;01 – 01;08;00;21
Rebecca Hay
And like you said, like start to delegate some of the tasks to the ones you don’t like.
01;08;00;26 – 01;08;13;18
Dina Holland
The ones you don’t like, the ones that aren’t adding value to your day, the ones that you’re like, the so mundane, I know how to do this. I do it every day. Well, someone else doesn’t know how to do those things. You know, someone else is. That’s a a learning opportunity for someone else. Someone else to cycle, to learn it, to be okay.
01;08;13;20 – 01;08;15;05
Dina Holland
But I love.
01;08;15;05 – 01;08;16;06
Rebecca Hay
That they might love.
01;08;16;06 – 01;08;29;06
Dina Holland
That. Oh my God, Rebecca, when I first hired a project manager, I was on a giant construction renovation job and I didn’t have a project manager, and I was doing a lot of the project management. And someone said to me, why did you just hire a project manager? And I thought, who the hell would do this full time?
01;08;29;07 – 01;08;48;20
Dina Holland
People like doing this. This is so stressful, right? Yeah. I remember thinking, like, I’m never going to find someone to just do this. And and off my, my friend was like, no, this is what people do. This is people do this for their entire job. Like, oh, that’s a terrible job. But there are people who just they get off on that, like, task list and, you know.
01;08;48;27 – 01;08;51;00
Dina Holland
Oh, yeah. What happened to you? Great.
01;08;51;07 – 01;08;54;18
Rebecca Hay
Following up, following up, making sure.
01;08;54;20 – 01;08;58;13
Dina Holland
Yeah. And definitely.
01;08;58;15 – 01;09;01;11
Rebecca Hay
Invoicing. I hate freaking invoicing.
01;09;01;14 – 01;09;01;27
Dina Holland
Do too.
01;09;02;03 – 01;09;14;25
Rebecca Hay
But there’s people there like, oh, I want to design docs. It’s all set up now. It’s organized the the banks, the bank statement is reconciled for this month. I’m like what? I never had it reconciled with the me. Like three months later, people will be asking me what was this charge for?
01;09;14;29 – 01;09;27;26
Dina Holland
Like, yeah, I don’t remember exactly. So that’s what our purchasing person purchases. Everything reconciles free, you know, is interacting with our bookkeeper constantly. It’s it’s a lot. I mean.
01;09;27;28 – 01;09;29;25
Rebecca Hay
Yeah.
01;09;29;27 – 01;09;50;28
Dina Holland
80% of this business is just business, just like any other business. It’s not. You know what I mean? It’s client relations. It’s accounting. It’s new business development. It’s marketing. It’s, it’s just business. And then there’s the creative part, but I, I have read a great book recently called Run, Studio Run. Have you ever read the book?
01;09;51;01 – 01;09;53;17
Rebecca Hay
No, I’m gonna write that. Don’t run. Studio run.
01;09;53;22 – 01;10;14;29
Dina Holland
Yes. It’s so good. And it is. It’s not about interior design. It is about running a small creative studio. So the so it talks mostly about like ad agency, just creative studio studios, a branding studio and naming whatever it might be. But there are so many parallels. There’s so many things that directly from this book I was like, yes, I need to be doing that.
01;10;15;02 – 01;10;31;08
Dina Holland
You know, I need to be tracking leads. I need to be there. I couldn’t I can’t recommend highlight enough. But that goes to back to my point of so much of this business is just business. So don’t get so stuck in how other designers do it. It’s like, how do other businesses do this?
01;10;31;10 – 01;10;50;20
Rebecca Hay
Yes, and reading business books that aren’t necessarily for designers total like the Image was one of my first business books that I read, which highlights the fact that just because you’re creative doing your craft, that’s not enough to run a business, right? And that’s a lot of us start where like one creatives, we like to work with fabrics.
01;10;50;20 – 01;10;58;12
Rebecca Hay
We did a beautiful job and people like, oh, I know you want to hire you. And all of a sudden it’s like you’re running a business, but running really just wanted to be a designer. Creative.
01;10;58;18 – 01;11;01;22
Dina Holland
Yeah, but wake up. That’s not what’s happening, right?
01;11;01;25 – 01;11;03;13
Rebecca Hay
Stop and smell the roses, people.
01;11;03;14 – 01;11;07;04
Dina Holland
Wake up. That is not what’s happening. You are. Yeah.
01;11;07;07 – 01;11;17;04
Rebecca Hay
You’re on vacation. I’m going to let you go because we’re going over time. So you’re on vacation. My question to you is, are you working while on vacation?
01;11;17;06 – 01;11;35;23
Dina Holland
So this is the for. I’m about to blow your mind. I mean, it blew my mind. Okay, I normally I bring my laptop and I’m checking in. I’m, like looking at him, I have not. This is the first time I open my laptop with to do this podcast with you. I come out in the morning, I have my coffee on a screened in porch.
01;11;35;25 – 01;12;00;09
Dina Holland
I go through emails and then that’s it. And then I don’t look again. I’ve gotten two texts I want to say, while I’ve been away. And it’s been like quick little email or questions or whatever, but all that is because there was a lot of work that went into planning, being away. Right? Like for the very first time ever, a photo shoot is happening at a project next week, and I won’t be there because I’m on vacation.
01;12;00;09 – 01;12;21;14
Dina Holland
I’m, I’m I’m gone for two weeks. Wow. It’s amazing. So my team is handling this photoshoot. Typically that would stress me out, but I have such confidence in their abilities. We did all of this upfront planning. We went through shot lists. It’s going to be great. It’s to and I cannot tell you if you are a designer right now and you’re like, that’s a different planet than when I’m on.
01;12;21;14 – 01;12;37;23
Dina Holland
Like, I can’t even you can get there, you really can get there. But just it just takes investing in your people and empowering them because everybody wants to feel like sometimes I sit back and I marvel. I’m like, you know what? These women come to work every day and they work hard and it’s like, this isn’t there? Because this is my business.
01;12;37;23 – 01;12;56;00
Dina Holland
Like they’re working hard here for my on my behalf. Right. Like, don’t lose sight of that. That’s awesome. So like empower them, right. They they’re working for you. So what’s going to make them happy. They want to feel like they have a say in what they do every day. And you know, and yeah, I don’t know there’s a lot of power to that.
01;12;56;00 – 01;12;58;00
Dina Holland
You can keep people happy for a long time.
01;12;58;03 – 01;13;10;03
Rebecca Hay
But yeah. And it sounds like you’re doing that. It sounds like you’ve got like an incredible team and incredible business. Okay, before we sign off, I can. Okay. I feel like we’re going to Paris. We’ll do the.
01;13;10;05 – 01;13;10;12
Dina Holland
Okay.
01;13;10;13 – 01;13;12;19
Rebecca Hay
Maybe I’ll come down to Boston.
01;13;12;21 – 01;13;16;12
Dina Holland
Don’t come in the winter. So I’ve been in the winter.
01;13;16;12 – 01;13;17;01
Rebecca Hay
It’s not.
01;13;17;04 – 01;13;20;13
Dina Holland
Canada. It’s fine. Come in February.
01;13;20;15 – 01;13;29;15
Rebecca Hay
Actually, I think I’m going to come down in October because my sister’s birthday. But I think I’ll just come without the family just because of the quarantining and vaccinations. And my kids are too little.
01;13;29;21 – 01;13;30;09
Dina Holland
Yeah.
01;13;30;11 – 01;13;47;11
Rebecca Hay
We’ll see to be confirmed. Okay. Before we sign off, so many things we’ve talked about, but what do you what would you say would be your last nugget of wisdom to as a leave behind all the decisions who are listening today?
01;13;47;14 – 01;13;52;09
Dina Holland
Oh, boy. That’s so hard.
01;13;52;11 – 01;13;53;26
Rebecca Hay
I realize I’m putting, you know.
01;13;53;26 – 01;13;58;14
Dina Holland
No, it’s okay. I mean, there’s just so many things.
01;13;58;16 – 01;14;18;01
Rebecca Hay
I think, like, while you’re thinking. Just so for those of you little give, you know, dine out at honey and Fitz a follow. But she’s so inspirational. I think you’ve been so inspirational. And, you know, even for me, like just seeing you say, like, oh, this is the way it’s done. This is what things cost. You’re also often like putting it out there in your stories, like, this is what things cost.
01;14;18;03 – 01;14;34;11
Rebecca Hay
Not compromising this. You know, we’re I’m going to do my design esthetic. Like for me, that’s been so inspirational to see like, okay, like I’m just going to do what I want to do, not the safe route, because I still do. So I’m like, that’s not really my true personal design esthetic and I can’t wait to do my own thing.
01;14;34;11 – 01;14;37;24
Rebecca Hay
We’re building a farmhouse. I can’t wait to just what I want without.
01;14;37;24 – 01;14;38;09
Dina Holland
Fear.
01;14;38;09 – 01;14;56;07
Rebecca Hay
Of judgment or anything, or fear that it’s not going to be liked. So I think for me less and like seeing you just tackle these business endeavors and just go all in is very inspirational. But like, I don’t know what else is there that you can share other than what I already know.
01;14;56;10 – 01;15;15;15
Dina Holland
If you’re starting out, if you’re like, you know, you’re within three years of starting or whatever, I think it can be really difficult when you haven’t worked for somebody else and you’re starting out fresh to know what, what is a realistic budget? How much should I be asking people for? Oh my God, is that how much a coach, a coach costs?
01;15;15;15 – 01;15;35;17
Dina Holland
Or that you need to educate yourself as quickly as you can about what things really costs? Don’t be afraid to talk to other designers. It’s so hard. I think if I had been more willing to pick up the phone and just be like, hey, can we talk for ten minutes or whatever, I think I would have learned at a at a pace that eclipses what I actually learned, because I had to learn all those mistakes on my own.
01;15;35;17 – 01;15;58;10
Dina Holland
And you’re just by yourself doing those and making those mistakes by yourself and going, oh my God, is that it? That’s now we’re out of business. Like, that’s just how this goes. You know, educate yourself about what things cost and someone said this to me, like sometime in the last year. And I was like, wow, that’s pretty powerful.
01;15;58;12 – 01;16;19;24
Dina Holland
Don’t ever estimate that, you know what a client thinks something should cost. Like the word budget is kind of a dirty word. It’s really like you have no idea what someone’s financial situation is. You have no idea how much money they’re planning to spend just because they say to you, I only want to spend $30,000 on this room, doesn’t mean they don’t have $60,000 to do that room you don’t know.
01;16;19;26 – 01;16;39;22
Dina Holland
Your job is to do the best job that you can present them with the best options. And if they decide to splurge, you don’t know what their financial situation is. So take the word budget out of your discussion and call it an investment, because that’s really what they’re doing is making an investment in their home. And your job is to just show them, okay, this is what a $2,000 chair looks like.
01;16;39;29 – 01;17;04;28
Dina Holland
But here’s a $3,000 chair and it’s better. And you’ll look at it and go, yeah, that is better. And then it’s for them to decide, you know, but don’t don’t delude yourself here. Like, yes, there are people making money off of design and all of that. But like, this is a business that services a luxury clientele, period. And you need to get comfortable talking to people about money because you’re going to be spending their money.
01;17;05;00 – 01;17;15;09
Rebecca Hay
And understanding that your personal sticker shock is not always going to be. And in fact, most of the time, I’d say it’s not the same sticker shock that your client has.
01;17;15;11 – 01;17;35;15
Dina Holland
100%. I was so guilty of that in the beginning of being like, I, I cannot recommend a $50,000 rug. Who the hell would buy that rug? But that’s your own bias. That’s like that’s that’s coming from how I grew up and the financial situation. I grew up. Right? That’s like that’s all of that. That’s that has no bearing at all on what is right for that room and for that client, for that home.
01;17;35;17 – 01;17;38;08
Dina Holland
Yeah, but it’s hard to get there.
01;17;38;10 – 01;17;51;25
Rebecca Hay
Wow, girl, I hope everyone listening. I hope you all are offering up $50 rugs to your clients, looking for you to report back. This has been awesome and thank you so much for making the time on your vacation to.
01;17;51;27 – 01;17;52;21
Dina Holland
Stop.
01;17;52;21 – 01;17;59;11
Rebecca Hay
And join me. Can you let everybody know where they can find you? I feel like we’ve said it, but just absolutely.
01;17;59;13 – 01;18;13;04
Dina Holland
So, online Dina Holland interiors.com. And on Instagram at Honey and Fitz H2O. Anyway and dfi tv.com. No, not the conference room.
01;18;13;07 – 01;18;18;28
Rebecca Hay
Or Z if you’re Canadian. Oh I know. Thank you so, so much.
01;18;18;29 – 01;18;20;20
Dina Holland
You’re welcome Rebecca. Have a great rest. Your night.
