Ep 81 Interior Designers Stop Guessing Your Pricing

Welcome to another podcast episode. If pricing in your interior design business has ever felt confusing, emotional, or overwhelming, this episode is for you.

Because no matter what stage you are at in your business, pricing is one of the most important foundations you will build. And when it is not aligned, it can quietly create significant unrest. From second-guessing your quotes to adjusting your fees depending on the client to feeling unsure whether you are charging too much or not enough, it can leave you feeling stuck, uncertain, and exhausted.

In this episode, I take you into a powerful and honest conversation around pricing and what is really happening beneath the surface when it feels hard.

Drawing from my experience working closely with women in my mentorships and with her Pricing for Profit and Service Alignment Accelerator, I share what I see time and time again when reviewing businesses. From misaligned services and inconsistent pricing structures to gaps in procurement, trade coordination, and installation, I highlight how pricing is not just about numbers but about how your entire business model operates.

This episode will walk you through the key shifts required to move from guessing your pricing to understanding it, from feeling like an interior designer navigating projects to stepping into your role as a true interior design business owner.

🚀 Ready to take this further?

If this episode resonates with you and you are ready to stop guessing your pricing and start building a business that truly supports you, there are two ways you can step into this work:

 Fully Booked & Highly Paid HERE
Learn the core pricing formulas of the first stage of design in Stage 1 design direction, and frameworks to confidently price your services and remove overwhelm.

 Pricing for Profit & Service Alignment Accelerator
Go deeper into your business and align your entire pricing model, from services through to procurement, trade coordination, and installation, so every part of your business is working together profitably.  If you want to book onto Pricing for Profit & Service Alignment Accelerator VIP Day + 60-Day support this is for the woman who wants to move into 2026 with clarity and confidence, deeply connected to her business, cutting through overwhelm and guesswork, and stepping out of the cycle of reinventing the pricing wheel. This is where you align your pricing and services, speak with authority, and start hearing yes from the right ideal buyer. 

• In-person VIP Day (10:30 am–4 pm, London private members club)

• Beautiful lunch and drinks included

• 60 days of Voxer message support while you implement with confidence

This is a focused, embodied connection, followed by supported execution.

Price £2222 ( Deposit and payment plan available)

Email designbossdiary@gmail.com to reserve your space. 

Come over to Instagram and say HI, connect with me and carry on the conversation HERE

🎯 This episode is for:

•  Interior designers who feel unsure about their pricing 
•  Creatives who are tired of guessing and adjusting their fees 
•  Designers ready to build a profitable, structured business 

And as always if you have loved this episode we would love for you to leave a review and if you screenshot this podcast and share it on your socials, tagging @Design_Boss_Diary in then we have a special gift waiting just for you. 

See you in the next episode you lovely lot! Xx

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Hello, how are you doing? I am so excited to bring you to today's podcast. And we're recording this on Design Boss Diary's second business birthday in Amsterdam. And we've just had an incredible month of March in the business where so many women have had the biggest breakthroughs in their pricing. So I want to set the scene for you because today this conversation is still around pricing, but it doesn't just apply when you're starting out. It applies at every single stage of your business. Now, whether you're right at the beginning, whether you're a few years in, whether you're already working with clients and still finding yourself questioning things behind the scenes, this is completely normal if your pricing is not regulated. Now, pricing is one of those areas that can quietly create a huge amount of unrest in your business. And I see this all the time. When I sit down with a woman on an accelerator day and we go through their entire pricing map from their initial services through to procurement, trade coordination, installation, what starts to unfold is not just the numbers, it's confusion, it's gaps, it's misalignment, it's uncertainty around how everything actually connects. And so for so many women, they've been operating like this for a while. They've been holding it together, they've been making it work, and it makes me so sad because I want to support every single woman, but they never really feel fully clear. And then something really powerful happens as we start to map everything out properly and we bring that structure into their pricing, we align every part of their business model. You can physically see the shift. There's this moment where everything clicks, the relief on their faces, the shoulders drop. And honestly, it says everything because for the first time, they're not just understanding their prices in isolation, how it applies to quotes, how it applies to live projects, how it flows through their entire business. And that's the moment they stop feeling like they're just an interior designer figuring things out as they go, and they start stepping into being a business owner, which is very important. And that's exactly what I want to bring into today's conversation because when your pricing is aligned properly, your whole business starts to feel different. And I want you to imagine this. I want you to imagine sitting down to price a project. And instead of staring at your screen, second guessing every number, rewriting your quote three or four times, adding, taking off money, zeros, it just feels clear. Okay, you're not hesitating, you're not adjusting things to feel safe, you're not wondering if it's too much or not enough. You're applying a structure you understand, you know your pricing, you know your services, and you know exactly how this project fits into your business model. Unless you build that quote, there's no emotion attached to it, there's no anxiety, there's no overthinking, there's just clarity. And when you send it, you don't feel that drop in your stomach, you feel grounded because you know you've priced that project properly. You know you're being paid exactly what you're worth. And you know that project is going to support your business financially. And there is this part that I really want you to feel. When you start operating like this consistently, your business starts to feel, oh my God, so, so different. It feels lighter, it feels sexier, more stable, more supportive, it's thriving. And that's where financial freedom actually starts to begin, the consistent 5k, 10k cash months. Not just money you make really quickly, but in how your business actually runs. Okay, now, if that feels quite far away from where you currently are right now, I just want to bring you gently back into the room because for most interior designers, it feels completely different. You are an incredible, incredibly talented woman. You can transform spaces automatically, but when it comes to pricing, you want to run a mile, you second guess every quote, you rewrite your fees for every client. I know you lower prices just to secure the job, and then feel resentful before the project's begun. And I can feel you nodding at this, okay? And I want you to know, I've been there. When I launched my studio back in 2016, 10 years now, I came from an incredible background. I worked in luxury property development, run departments, I contributed to multi-million pound portfolios. But when it came to my own business, I felt completely lost. And no one was talking about pricing, no one was sharing how to actually build a profitable interior design business. And I remember sitting there Googling, how do I even write a proper welcome letter and a quotation to a client? While also thinking, what on earth should I bloody be charging? And I was consistently, constantly second-guessing myself, looking at other designers, trying to piece together what they were doing. And I'd always wonder why it would feel so hard. And here's the truth: no one tells you. You do not have a pricing problem. You have a lack of structure because when there is no structure, everything becomes heightened, it becomes emotional, it feels so personal. Every number feels risky, every decision feels heavy. And that's what creates the overwhelm. So the first shift that changed everything for me was really understanding that structure creates freedom. And now I know that might sound counterintuitive because you might be thinking here, yeah, but I want to be really flexible. And yes, flexibility and design is beautiful, but flexibility and pricing, now that is just chaos disguised as kindness because when your pricing is always changing, you never feel anchored. So what we do instead is we build structure, we build clear services, clear deliverables, clear pricing logic, so that when a client comes to you, you are not starting from scratch. You're guiding them. You're being able to say, based on what you've shared, this is the service that's right for you. And that is what builds trust. That is what builds trust and authority, and most importantly, that's what builds confidence within you because you can start operating your business from a place of clarity, not lack. Okay, now pricing from value. So many people say to me, I don't know how to do that, but this is a huge shift, and this is one that really resonated with me. It's moving from pricing based on time to pricing based on value because if you're still thinking, how many hours is this bloody going to take me? You are already limiting yourself. Your client is not paying for your time, they are paying for your expertise, they're paying for your eye, they're paying for your ability to create transformation, they're paying for your zone of genius and your relief to their problem, and they're paying for what it feels like to live in a transformative space. And when you can truly understand that, everything shifts. It shifts for you. You stop shrinking, you stop justifying, you stop undercharging, and you start leading. You start leading like the businesswoman you know you're meant to be. And I see this happen all the time. One of my clients said to me recently, I've just landed my first properly priced project at£10,000, and I would have never dreamed of charging that before. Now, that's not just a pricing shift for her, that's an identity shift. And this is really where my zone of genius sits. It's not just telling you to charge more, it's not about that. It's giving you the right formulas aligned to your business, the right frameworks aligned to your service suite and the toolkits in order for you to deliver your business properly. So that when you sit down to price a project, you are not guessing. You're applying something that works, something that's repeatable, scalable, profitable. So your projects, they don't just look beautiful and ooze that scrumptious feeling. They are magnetic in how they are priced. They're actually going to generate profit for you. And I want to bring this to life for you because this is not just theory. And I had another client come to me recently, and on the outside, everything looked like it was working. She had some projects, she had clients, she was generally busy. But when we actually sat down together, she said something that really stayed with me. She said, I feel like Lisa, I'm just working so hard and I don't feel like I'm moving forward. And I just want you to really sit with that for a second because that feeling is where so many women quietly sit in their business. She went on to say, I can't even see what£50,000 past this would actually even look like for me. And I don't know what type of projects I need to be working on. I don't even know how I would price those type of projects to bring that together. And when she said that, it wasn't because it was a lack of ambition, it was because she had a total lack of clarity in how her service suite and her pricing aligned. So when we sat down and we actually looked at her business properly, not just her pricing in isolation, but her entire pricing map, we looked at her three core services. And the first thing we did was bring them back into alignment. What do you actually want to offer? Who are these services for? And what is the standard you are setting for each one? Because if that isn't clear from the offset, pricing, of course, is going to feel really, really unstable for you and your business. And then we went deeper. We looked at the expectations within each service. We built in non-negotiables, we created clear boundaries around what was included. So she wasn't over-delivering just to feel worth it. And then we layered in the most important part the pricing. Not guessed, not plucked out of thin air, but structured. Structured pricing that was aligned to her business, aligned to her capacity, and aligned to where she actually wanted to go. And then we didn't stop there. Because this is where most people stop, okay? We took her through her entire business model, her design service, from concept through to presentation, her procurement, what that looked like, how that was priced, how that was positioned, her trade coordination, at what various stages that needs to be implemented, how that needs to be communicated and priced, her installation, what was that, her baseline, day rates, how to communicate that with the rest of the team. And most importantly, how all of that is present to the client. Okay. Because pricing isn't just about numbers, it's about how you position those numbers. And there was this moment where everything just clicked for her. When she could see in front of her what she had been charging versus what she should have been charging based on the structure we had built. And she just sat there and said, Oh my gosh, this is going to change everything. Because for the first time, she wasn't guessing. She understood it. And this is why I anchor into my zone of genius and why I love doing what I do with women. Being able to step into a woman's business and very quickly see where all the gaps are, where the misalignment is, where she's undercharging, and not just point it out, but dismantle it, rebuild it, and give her a structure that actually works without overwhelming her, without overcomplicating it, but in a way that she can take and apply immediately. Because what I want you to understand is this that feeling of being stuck, of working really, really hard but not moving forward in your business, that's not permanent. That is just a sign that your pricing and your business model are not aligned yet. And when they are, everything starts to shift around that. And for those of you that are listening, who are ready for that next level, that you're just like, you know what, I'm done doing this. I cannot run a business like that. You might be thinking, I don't just want to understand this, I want to implement it properly across my entire business model. That is where my pricing accelerator comes in. Pricing for profit and service alignment, because this is where we go so deep. We look at your pricing model, your procurement, your service structure, your installation, your trade coordination, your boundaries, your expectation in what you deliver. We align everything. We also look at that 90-day forecast model. We look at your financial tracker. It's every part of your business working together and profitably as it should be. So I want to leave you with this. The version of you who feels clear, confident, and calm in her pricing, she's not a different person. She's just understands her business differently. She has structure, she has clarity, she has the right tools. And if right now you're still guessing, you're still overthinking, and still feeling that weight every time you send a quote, you do not have to stay there, okay? I've supported hundreds of women around this. You're allowed to build this business properly, you're allowed to understand your numbers in your interior design business, you're allowed to charge properly, profitably, and not work for less than minimum wage. And you're allowed to create a business that actually supports you, that feels really good on the inside, as good as it looks on the outside. And if you're ready for that next step, then I want you to head to the show notes because I want to take you through my pricing accelerator. We get to spend the day in London together, six and a half hours diving deep into that pricing and service model, and then you get 60 days implementation support where we can together make sure that your business in pricing is dismantled and rebuilt properly for profit. Thank you so much for joining me on today's podcast. As I said, we have just turned to the business. If I look back on the last couple of years, it has been an amazing, wild, gorgeous ride. But the biggest thing I did, which I really regret not doing when I started my interior design business, is I implemented support from day one. I wanted to build this business properly. I wanted this business to be profitable. So I got the support I needed working with phenomenal coaches and mentors that I still have today. I'm going into my third year working with them. And I really regret not doing that when I opened Mosca, my interior design studio in Oxted. I really regret spending years not understanding or knowing how to price profitably for a sole business because it's completely different coming out of corporate or working for other companies. You have to understand your overheads. And I'm wondering where my business would be now if I had put that support in place and built those foundations, not just in pricing, but everything else. And this is why I'm celebrating Design Boss Diary Becoming 2, because only 12% of female-led founders actually get to six-figure businesses and beyond. Those statistics need to change, and that is why I'm on a mission to support so many women in this industry. Because when I first got the implementation and support in my business, in the first year we went to 100,000 with less than a thousand followers on social media. We are now going into our third financial year. The business has just turned two. And we are over 325,000 generated sales to date in the business. I have tripled my figures year on year. This work that is available to you will transform your business life. And I have now coached and mentored hundreds of women. I hold a 97% retention rate. And I'm so proud for those figures because collectively, through my pricing formulas, women that have worked with me in my coaching and mentoring business has generated over 1.3 million collectively in their businesses to date in 24 months. And I cannot wait to get my hands on so many more female-founded women-led businesses to support them, to support them on the journey to financial freedom, to support them in their everyday lives, to support them profitably price their businesses so they can do the things that they love. So if you're one of those women, then I would love for you to reach out to me, head over to Instagram, send me a message, or our email address is below, reach out for a discovery call, and I cannot wait to support you in your business.