Ep 86 The Hidden Gaps That Quietly Stop Interior Designers From Becoming Profitable

Welcome back to the podcast, my gorgeous souls. Today’s conversation is a really important one because we are diving into the foundations that make up a profitable, sustainable, and well-structured interior design business.

After 16 years in the industry, I have seen businesses built in so many different ways, some supportive and scalable, and others completely built on the fly, with no real systems, structure, or financial roadmap behind them.

And the truth is, talent alone is not enough to build a profitable business.

You can be an incredible designer, but if your pricing structures, procurement fees, trade coordination, management fees, forecasting, and financial systems are not properly set up, you will constantly feel like you are chasing your business rather than leading it.

This episode is really about bringing awareness to the hidden gaps that quietly stop interior designers from becoming profitable and sustainable long term. We’re talking about creating a well-oiled machine behind the scenes, understanding your numbers, building a financial roadmap, and learning how to confidently position and sell your services with clarity and conviction.

Because when you truly understand your business, your pricing, your profit margins, and your client journey, everything changes. This is your invitation to stop bobbling along and start building intentionally.

Join Lisa-marie and the women in the Design Boss Diary family, follow on Instagram HERE and find more about how you can work with Lisa in 2026 and Beyond. 

Other episodes are on our YouTube channel HERE

Ready to be supported inside your business and move forward with clarity, structure, and confidence?

If you’re at a point where you know things need to shift and you’re ready for guidance that actually holds you through that process there are several ways we can work together.

From high-proximity 1:1 mentorship to group spaces designed to build momentum and accountability, each experience is created to support you at different stages of your journey.

To explore what support would look like for you, reach out directly at designbossdiary@gmail.com and start the conversation. 2026 has a limited amount of spaces already. 

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, from your Interior Design business strategist and soulful leadership business mentor x

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to episode 86, and today I'm gonna be talking to you and diving into the structures that make up our interior design business or our home staging business or our interior home styling. And as a business owner myself and being in the industry of 16 years, I have seen things done in lots of various ways, and my mission is really really simple it's supporting women build thriving, sustainable, profitable businesses and doing it correctly because I see so many businesses being built in ways that are done on the wing, on the fly. And earlier on in the week, I had put a post up on Instagram which got so much traction based on three signs your interior design business isn't working for you, okay? And I had so many people reach out to say, Oh my god, yes, this area I'm struggling with, this area I need work on. And when we talk about the components of what makes up our interior design business, we need to be making sure that the whole foundations are stable, but we understand the biggest driver of all, and that is the areas of our business in which our pricing structures fall. And what I mean by that is everything from your stage one, your conceptual and your design direction fees, including what you charge when you go out for your consultations, through to your procurement fees, your management fees, your trade coordination fees, your layer margining on top of that within all your micro areas of fabric and wallpaper and labour, of blinds, window dressings, etc. Now, if I'm kind of talking to you about all of this and you're like, oh my god, I don't have any of that solidified or set up, or I only have 50%. I know what I'm doing there, but I don't know what I'm doing there, then I want you to listen on because today's podcast is giving you a little insight into what you need to be thinking about. When it comes to design clients, we want to make sure we have a complete well-oiled machine. A well-oiled machine from start to finish, and we know how to pivot our clients from the minute they land down into our world until we are finished and done with the project. Now you might be thinking, Lisa, how do I create a well-oiled machine when every single client has a different brief? Now, yes, every single client might have a different brief and a set of requirements, but how you work behind the scenes in taking them through that project is your well-oiled machine. You need to have systems and processes in place as well as lead times on various sections in order to know how your client moves through and where you're working to. Alongside that, you need to build in areas of your business where you know what to charge where. Now, if a client came to you and you had a living room project, but you also had a kitchen and bathroom project, how would you potentially price that? You wouldn't price it the same way across the board. There's different structures. And whilst I'm not going to go into the formulas and the ways of pricing those because they fall into other areas that I teach and mentor with my women, I want to very much talk to you about the structure in how you approach it. Now, a kitchen and a bathroom is very, very different from a lounge or a dining room, and you have set structures in each. So, what I mean by creating a well-oiled machine is understanding how you charge for your stage one fees, maybe in a lounge and a kitchen and bathroom, to your management and your procurement fees across the board with both, and how does your trade coordination fall into that if they're going for the whole package? Now, these do not come up as separate parts of your business, they are all systems that you should have in place and every single one of them understood, positioned, and aligned and built with attention. So I'm going to ask you these questions. Do you know how your procurement sits alongside your design fees? And if you are nodding and saying, Well, yeah, I do, but I'm a little bit untirely unsure about how I build the management fee or where I lay a margin to get the most out of my window dressings or my fabrics, then you have work to do. Do you know how your trade coordination is being charged, or is it quietly being absorbed into your time at no cost at all to the client? And if you're sitting there going, God, trade coordination, I didn't even know it's a thing. I was just billing it in with stage one, then we've got work to do. We need to have a chat because when you take a client on for a full-turnkey service, it's not just one large lump sum, it's a varied multitude of formulas and sums across the board that I teach to become the most profitable, and it's how you interchange between the project and how you invoice that supports you create the longevity with your sales revenue as well as your stacked income. And this is why when I get clients come to me to say, Lisa, I really want a five, I really want 5k months, or I really want 10k months. I'm like, okay, that's fine. What do your services look like? And they go, Well, uh, what do you mean? And I said, Well, what does your service structure look like? How is it profitably priced? Where are all the areas that we need to look at to really build those profit margins in? Where do we need to layer and soak up? What do your project data look like? How can we forecast that? Let's get that up on a financial tracker. And this completely blows a woman's mind. And I'll give you an example. I had a VIP day with a really, really lovely client last week. And it's a client that we've taken from 24,000 before she came and started working with me, up to 75,000 in one financial year by simply pivoting her service structures and the way she priced. We were able to basically take what she does very well across a couple of different areas of design and look at the design, the procurement, the managing fees, the trade coordination fees, and the layer margins within that. And then we were able to put it up on a forecast, a 12-month forecast, and understand how many clients she needs to reach her goal of say 180,000 or 150,000 for the year ahead. And then we could look back into her services and say, you're only going to need X amount of that and X amount of that. So that's actually the pool of clients we're looking at for the year. And she was like, Oh my God, now that you've laid it all out in the table and I understand my services, I understand my pricing around every single area, and I know my trajectory, I know my forecast, I know what my sales and marketing is going to be doing and who I need to talk to, I feel like I've got such a clear plan. And I find that so many women, so many women in business don't actually put the time and effort to do this. Because if you did do this and understand your design structures, how your billing, your procurement fees, your trade coordination, your fees, your structure, your boundaries, you would become so much more profitable. And if all of those questions that I have just asked in the last five minutes of the podcast, if the answer to any of those is no or not really, I don't know what I'm doing, you are leaving significant money on the table, every single project. Okay? And a well-oiled machine means that every element of how you deliver is accounted for, priced correctly, and contributing to your bottom line, okay? Not just the headline design fee, all of it. And it's understanding how all of it is populated through your interior design business. If you are bumbling along, if you do not have a financial tracker, if you don't have a forecast, if you do not understand the structures of how all of this is being built in your business, you are simply running a really expensive hobby that might pay you sometimes, if not not at all. Okay? And I only say that out of love because it's my mission to support as many women, become as profitable as they can to run feel-good aligned businesses. Now, this is not complicated, what I'm saying, but it does require you to sit down and really map it out completely. And I want you just to shut your eyes for a minute. Don't shut your eyes if you're listening in the car or you're driving or you're doing something. But if you're sitting down listening to this podcast over a cup of tea, or you're just at the table, maybe journaling and you've got me on in the background, I just want you to stop and make yourself aware of your surroundings. Imagine waking up knowing how everything aligns in your business, the clarity around your figures, the conversations around numbers, how the contract variations work, the quotations, the tenders, working with your services, and you're opening up your business bank account and you're seeing a consistent flow of money dropping in, invoices paid, and suddenly you are not panicking. You are not needing to think that you need 20 to 30 people to make ends meet, to work through your business. You know you need a steady stream of clients of maybe 10 or 11 for the whole of the year to hit your financial goals, and this is the work that I do with all of my clients because in the interior design industry, nobody and absolutely nobody is really talking about the financial roadmaps that you need. Now, I know I can say this as directly as I can because you've been listening to me for a while now, or maybe if you're new but you've binged me on Instagram, you know that I'm a very black and white coach. I say it how it is, but I say it out of love. If you do not understand your financial roadmap, your numbers on a monthly basis, you are not running a business. You need to, as well as your setup with your stage one fees, your procurement, your trade coordination, your management fees, your layer margining, okay, all of that across the board. You need to understand how that's being billed, but you also need to understand your project sales revenue, your cost of sales, what your 20% tax is doing, your five to 15% profit pots, your balances, your business running costs, your forecasted goal data, your profit and loss. That is a figure that can be very easily populated on a financial tracker. If I were to have a quick chat to you and you had it there, you could tell me what your profit and loss was for the month by just looking at a formulated tracker. And this is something that I build with women to help them support how their business is running so we can forecast all of their data. But if you do not have all of that and you do not have a basic understanding of that, you are running a very expensive hobby, like I said. You are chasing the next project. If you're a designer constantly chasing the next project, or you are 99% in your projects all the time, we need to pivot that and turn that around. As a business owner, as someone running a business, you need to be able to sit up and elevated in your business and look at everything across the quarter, half a year, a year, and dedicate that time in your business. If you currently do not have any time in your business where you cannot be looking at all of this to populate it and work on it, we need to create those CEO days for you. Because your financial roadmap is not your accountant's job, okay? And I want to say that with love. Your financial roadmap is not your accountant's job to hand to you at the end of the year, it's yours to own, to review, to build. And that's why working with a coach and mentor, you can very much do that with them, depending on who you work with. I know when women work with me, it is an absolute imperative on one of my one-to-one services, my accelerators, that we've got financial trackers. We're looking at that data, we're looking at the numbers. I want to know how much you want to make, and I want to make that happen with you. So, again, do you know what your revenue target is for the year, broken down month by month or even project by project or quarter by quarter? Do you know your average project value and how many projects you need, again, to be hitting the numbers that you want to hit? And these are not advanced questions, they are the foundations of a financial roadmap. And without any of this, the clarity around it, every pricing decision you're gonna make is complete guesswork at the end of the day. Yes, you might have a few formulas, but if you do not have the whole structure, the business is gonna constantly, it's like a car that keeps jolting. You'll move a bit and jolt, move a bit and jolt, move a bit and jolt. So we want to we want to stop that. That's really important. The two key things is you have to have that financial roadmap and you have to have a well-oiled machine understanding how all of the components work together. You have to be able to stand in front of a client at the presentation and stand there with conviction and talk to them about how the procurement is gonna be built and worked alongside the trade coordination, how that's gonna be separated up, build and worked. Okay. And if you have any lack of clarity or uh decision fatigue over any of that, your clients are gonna feel it. They want to be working with interior design business owners that have got their stuff together, they have got their numbers together, they can confidently stand there and say, this is how the project is gonna run. We're gonna do this, this, this, this. This is how you get built, you get billed here, here, and here. And if you don't do that and you've got to come away from it, you are only aiding to your clients' lack of trust in you. And we don't want that. We want to be building strong, independent interior design business owners. So the first things first, a really well-oiled machine across all of your sectors and having that financial roadmap as well. And then we also want to make sure that do you understand your positioning with all of that as well? And when you have got all of that in place, all of that lovely strategy, and I know we do the internal work, and I'm not going to dive into the internal work today, but you're then wondering okay, where are my clients? If you can stand there and talk about your business with conviction and start showing up and selling with conviction, understanding how your business is put together, priced, and the clients that you need to find, you are halfway there. Okay. If you do not understand how many clients you need, how you're bobbling along, you're in one project, then you're jumping into another project after that's finished, but you're not, you haven't got that consistent pipeline. We need to work on that because the next biggest thing that quietly can break a business down is the brand perception not being aligned with the positioning and the messaging. And this is also something I see because this is a ripple effect of not having the other two in place. Now, someone might see your content and they really recognize themselves in it. You're either going to attract that client that is like she's got her stuff together. I know her business, sounds great, she speaks with conviction, she's got it nailed, or you're either going to attract a client that's going to question your fees, push back on your processes, and really is not going to value what you do because you are not showing up with the clarity around your business. If you do not understand your business and you don't understand your services, your positioning, your pricing, how do you expect your clients to understand it as well? Okay, so the brand perception is the silent signal you send before anyone ever speaks to you, and it's understanding this and getting it right in your foundations, which is 100% key to making sure the other two areas align as well. Like it is imperative to understand your brand perception. So, with today's podcast, I wanted to bring awareness across those three sections so that this can get you really, really thinking about where do I need to improve on? What is my business missing? And out of the podcast, I want you to go and grab a pen and paper if you can. If you're not driving or you know you're at home and you're pottering around listening to this, or you might be having a cup of tea sitting down listening. But if you can grab a pen and paper, I want you to think about what areas in your business do you need to improve on for 2026 and write them down. Maybe we're just going to start with two or three areas. And if pricing is a huge driver in that, then I invite you to email me, to message me on Instagram, because when I sit down with a woman across an accelerator day, we are spending six to seven hours really dissecting all of her services, all of her pricing, how that's positioned, what she needs to sell, and her forecasts and her financial roadmap so she can walk away with complete clarity. And if you can imagine taking time out of your business to sit down and actually look at gaining complete clarity over all of your numbers, all of your figures, and how they work in your business so that you can stand up with conviction and sell your business, stop undercharging, make more money. Okay, more money, all that money that you've been leaving on the table, we're starting to make more money, that is worth its weight in gold. Imagine waking up feeling completely light and excited, and knowing that you are starting to make some real money from here on in. This is what my accelerator does. And if you want more information, you can message me on Instagram or reach out to me on email, and I'd be really, really happy to share with you the details of how you can book onto our accelerator. But this is something that I really love to show women how to make money, how to set their financial forecasts, their planners, how to really understand their services, their profit, their alignment in business and the clients that they need. So today's podcast was a little bit of an audit, a little bit of awareness, a little bit of a wake-up so that you can think, okay, we are coming up to potentially the sixth month. How scary is that? We're coming up to the sixth month point of the year, and we want to ensure that actually, if we haven't done as what we set out to do from January over the first six months, how can we make a real difference in our businesses for the next six months? What does that look like? And what differences do you want to make? So I hope you've enjoyed today's podcast and you can get some journaling prompts from it. And if you want more and you want to dive into my world, then I would love to chat to you over on Instagram as well. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode, and I will be back next week with another Powerful Packed podcast, and I can't wait to see you then.