Tips For Building Future Success When Your Interior Design Business Is SLOW

We’re all experiencing a crazy time these days, with the terrifying virus and stock market drama. These two very significant events are enough to keep anyone from spending money on something like interior design services.

Let’s face it….we’re not selling toilet paper!

So, how do you cope? You might be dealing with your own income downturn or having to cut expenses dramatically in your business to survive. You might even be considering having to lay off employees.

It is scary and horrible to consider.

I can relate. I’ve been there.

Sometimes it takes going through a situation like this to realize you or your business is really pretty vulnerable.

I’ve listened to Suzy Orman for years off and on and one thing she always says is to have 6 months of your normal monthly expenses socked away, at all times. Don’t spend anything until you have that 6 months stored up.

You have to admit….that would likely get you over a bump like this just fine.

It’s hard to have that luxury though, if you’re growing your business. And when you have a full pipeline, it is easy to think the money will just keep coming in.

It’s also a pandemic of really epic proportions, unlike anything we’ve ever experienced in our lifetime, so give yourself a break for not being prepared for this one.

Planning For FUTURE SUCCESS

I imagine most of us are at a stage where we are wondering what will happen once things stabilize a little. Will they ever go back to the way things were before?

I think that is unlikely. This one is just too big and we’ve got serious economic repercussions happening.

While I can’t really help you here if you have a firm with multiple employees and major overhead, which I know a lot of you do…..I think I can help the solopreneur or someone who doesn’t have a big business footprint, with what I’m sharing today.

This is a good time for YOU to think about new design services or offerings that you might want to try.

I’ve been working for years on how to transition my business, as I knew I did not want to be only a full service designer forever. I’m sharing a bit about how I have done that below, with some links that might give you some ideas of your own.

Peruse Some Of My Content On This Blog

One of the best practices to start, if you have some time now, is to get into a habit of blogging regularly.

I have talked to a lot of people who want to get some passive income going, people who want to start writing eBooks or create courses to sell, but they have no traffic to their site. They aren’t nurturing or trying to grow an email list.

First, you need to work on creating content and driving traffic, then once you get people interested in your work or what you can do, THEN you can sell a course or product.

Until then, you are kind of going at it backward and might not get the results you’re looking for.

An audience doesn’t have to be all about blogging, it can include Instagram or other social sites, of course.

Your website IS, however, likely to be where your course, ebook, or other product might reside, so traffic there would be a benefit. It’s also a good place to build a hub for everything you offer and as a place where people can get to know you and your work better.

Here are some posts about blogging that you might find helpful.

I’ve also written about half a dozen posts with blogpost content ideas for specific months of the year. Here are some of them for spring/summer time. Keep in mind, we weren’t under fear of a pandemic when I wrote these, so the references to vacations and trade shows, etc., are obviously not applicable. :-/

Remote Consultations Service

Something that I offer as a bite size service are my Designed in a Click consultations, a remote, Q&A done via email. It came about because I was getting questions on my blog that people expected me to answer….for free!

I was also getting personal emails with questions and I thought I should figure out a way to charge for that.

I get 4-5 of these a month on average and I really kind of enjoy them.

Are these worth the time if I’m super busy with full service projects? Not really. However, they fuel my blog with content and keep me in touch with what my audience wants to know.

For a blogger, that is invaluable insight.

Plus, because they rest on my site, I turn them on or off as I need to. When I fractured my wrist last fall, I shut them down with a “Currently Not Available” sign on the buy button. (I was doing one-handed typing and that was sloooow.)

Here’s a post that talks about my consultations and has a link to my eBook Guide on the subject. That guide includes 22 pages of tips and examples of both in person and email consultations.

EBook Guides

Once I started getting traffic and an audience to sell something to, I started creating my eBook guides. I have them here in my Outlet Shop.

I know you all have heard about selling courses and pdfs like this online. Well, I started doing it so that I could sell something to my unique audience.

Most of my readers come from Google and Pinterest, and most of them are searching for solutions to their problems.

Since that type of traffic typically doesn’t hang around too long once they get their answers, I wanted something that would be an easy sell….something that would be affordable and concise, something of a direct solution.

I wasn’t out to write the how-to guide for interior design! :-)

I prefer writing about more succinct, specific topics that I feel confident about, that I have first hand experience with. I want to help my readers get a solution to their problems without having to buy a consultation with me. :-)

I started building those and placing them on my site several years ago and they continue to produce some income for me every single month. It works!

The important aspect of this is to first create the content and attract the audience, analyze that audience to see what resonates with them, then build products that will be an easy buy for them.

---

I hope some of these options might give you some ideas.

We have to get creative these days!

Hope we all weather this storm well and end up better and stronger. :-) Pin this image below to Pinterest to refer back to this post later!