Ep 91: Why September Starts Right Now, Do Not Fall Into the Summer Trap

Ep 91: Why September Starts Right Now, Do Not Fall Into the Summer Trap

Welcome back to the Design Boss Dialogue podcast, the interior design business podcast for women who are ready to build businesses that feel as good on the inside as they look on the outside.

Today I want to start with a sentence that might ruffle a few feathers: the quiet summer you're about to have is not bad luck, it's not the market, and it's not your clients disappearing on holiday. Every year I watch designers fall into the same trap — enquiries slow down, they take their foot off the gas, and then September arrives and the diary is empty.

Whilst August can naturally feel quieter in our industry, June and July are some of the most important sales and planning months of the entire year for an interior design business. What you do now determines what lands in your diary in September, October and beyond.

In this episode, we cover:
— The Quiet Summer Trap and why so many interior designers fall into it every year
— The 90-Day Ripple Effect for Interior Designers— the framework I teach my clients for turning today's conversations into paid design projects three months from now
— How to break the feast-and-famine cycle in your interior design business
— Why marketing today creates revenue months later, not instantly
— Building a consistent lead generation pipeline as a design business owner
— Planning your capacity around holidays without losing momentum
— Turning Instagram into a virtual shopfront for your design studio
— Nurturing followers into future clients
— Creating a magnetic September and autumn pipeline

Quiet seasons aren't something to fear — they're planning seasons. They're the moments where strategy happens and the foundations for future growth are quietly built behind the scenes. What you do this week ripples out into September, and the actions you take today could completely change how the final quarter of your year looks.

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ABOUT DESIGN BOSS DIALOGUE

Design Boss Dialogue is the interior design business podcast for women ready to build a profitable, sustainable interior design business — without losing themselves in the process.

Each week, host Lisa-Marie Elkhadraoui, interior design business strategist, mentor and founder of Design Boss Diary, shares practical strategies on pricing, sales, marketing, visibility, systems and forecasting — combined with the mindset and leadership work that actually makes it sustainable.

This is business strategy and soulful leadership work for interior designers who want to build a design business that's both profitable and soul-led: one that supports the life you actually want to live, not just the one that looks good from the outside.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Right, I'm going to start this episode with a sentence that might ruffle a few feathers. You know me on a Monday morning, and here it is. The quiet summer you're about to have is not bad luck. It is not the market, it's not your clients all disappearing on holiday. The quiet summer trap. Now, this is where most designers walk straight into it every single year. And there are two points of the year that this can happen towards the end of the year in November, December, and July and August. Okay, so here's what happens: the sun comes out, inquiries can naturally slow down. Everyone tells themselves, oh, it's just the season, and they take their foot off the gas a little bit. And then September arrives, and the diary is completely empty, and they are scrambling around, desperately trying to build a runway in the exact month they need to be already taking off. Okay, because there is a method to the madness of getting over the summer. But the designers who win at summer they know something that the others don't, and they know that June and July are not quiet months. Okay, yes, it's notorious that we know in the month of August the season completely dies down, Europe shuts, suppliers all close their books for a while, and everyone goes on holiday. But the two months before that, they can be one of the most important sales months of the entire year. And today I'm gonna show you exactly why. And the one thing I want you to do today is make sure that September pays you. Okay, so wherever you are right now, on your commute, walking the dog, making the coffee, absolutely settle in because this one is gonna get your whole summer up. Let's go. Hello, and a very happy Monday to you. Welcome back to the Design Boss Dialogue Podcast. I am Lisa Marie Elkhadrawi, an award-winning interior designer and the mentor and coach behind Design Boss Diary. And I'm so glad you're here because this is a big one for us. This is episode 91. Oh my gosh, 91 episodes in just 18 months. And I have to share this with you because it still makes me a little bit emotional. We had confirmed last week that the podcast has now surpassed 10,000 downloads. 10,000 to every single one of you who presses play has done on a Friday morning. And now we're moving the podcast to Monday morning to get your week started. You are the reason this show exists, and all of the messages and emails that I receive from absolutely every single one of you. And we are hurtling towards a hundred episodes now, which feels completely wild from where I first started it. But I just want to say a huge thank you to each and every one of you that listens. And there's also a reason today's episode is landing in your ears on a Monday morning. We start it at 7am every Monday now, and we've moved the show to Mondays on purpose because I want to be the voice in your ear at the start of the week, the one that lights the fire underneath you before the to-do list takeover. And there is no better week to do that than this one because we are sitting literally right on the edge of July. Now, here's the truth about our industry that nobody likes to say out loud. August is notoriously quiet, like I've just mentioned in interior design. And it just is. Clients are away, schools close down, families are juggling the school holidays, decisions get naturally deferred. And if you wait until August to notice that, you've completely already lost. And you know me, I'm very black and white, I'm straight down the middle in my approach. What we don't want to do, and I say this with so much love, is fall off the edge of a cliff in August and have to claw our way back up to a steep runway in September. So this episode is your early warning and your opportunity both at once because June, which we've just had, and July right now are perfect months to really build momentum also in sales. Now, the designers that I work with, we are doing a 90-day runway into summer. So we very much start having conversations in April about uh June, July, August, and also September. So we do have naturally a very, very big runway in because we work in 90-day cycles. But if you're completely new to this and you think, oh God, I don't want to be that one that's clawing my way back up the runway in September, then take this episode and make the most of it, but try and find the key takeaways that I'm going to give you so that you can have a magnetic September. Okay, and I'm going to walk you through exactly how we can do that. So, the 90-day ripple effect. So, let me give you the framework that changes how this entire season is built. I call it the 90-day ripple effect. If you're in my world or um you are being coached and mentored by me, you will have have this absolutely nailed to a T by now. And it comes from a conversation I had recently with a designer in one of my communities, and I'm going to keep her anonymous, of course, who asked me such a brilliant question. And she said, You keep talking about how we do these 90-day ripple effects and and what happens 90 days later. Even financial forecasting, planning, advertising, anything you do today roughly takes 90 days to fully ripple through your business and show up as paid work. The content you post, the conversations you start, the blogs you write, the feature you land in, the discovery calls you have this week, they don't pay you this week. They pay you sometimes within four weeks, they sometimes pay you within eight weeks, even 12 weeks, depending on the type of contract that you set up. Which means, and I want you to really, really hear this: the work you do in July is not really meant for July. It's meant for the back end of September and October. So we have just obviously had the month of June and we're coming towards the end of June. And the work that we do in July and August and the start of September is going to start to ripple out towards the end of September, beginning of October. So already we are thinking we need to make sure July is magnetic. The clients you'll be installing for in the autumn are the conversations you're going to be having right now. And if you do nothing now because it feels quiet, you are quietly programming an empty September and October in your diary. Feast and famine. That exhausting roller coaster so many designers live on is not bad luck, okay? It is the symptom of only ever working reactively, of only doing the marketing when the diary is empty, and then stopping the second you get busy. And that is the trap. When the work comes in, you go heads down, you stop marketing, you stop having the conversations, and 90 days later, the world runs dry, so you panic and crank the marketing back up. And 90 days after that, you're slammed again, and around and around and around you go. And this is the feast or famine cycle. The roller coaster never ends because you keep getting back onto it. And this is why it's so important to have CEO days, okay? One day a week on the business. So here's the shift as a business owner, especially earlier in your journey, you have to hold two things at the same time. Yes, you serve the reactive now, the inquiries on your desk, the clients in front of you. But the very same time, you are building the pipeline for 90 days ahead. You are not choosing between them, you're doing both always. The way I think about it is this I've secured my pipeline for the next three, six, nine, twelve months beautifully. Now let me build a pipeline for three months after that. Okay, that's the rhythm. So if you're new to this, just think, okay, I need to build the pipeline for the three months, but then I need to concentrate on what the next three months is. You always want to be 90 days ahead of yourself. That's how you step off the roller coaster for good and get onto what I call the momentum wheel, where the work just keeps turning over because you never stop feeding it. And here's the bit that should really make you sit up on this Monday morning. Habits take 60 to 90 days to truly embed. So if you start today consistently, not as a one-off, you are perfectly timed for those efforts to land as real paying September work, September and October work. This is the window right now. Okay. Now I can hear some of you already, but Lisa Marie, I'm actually going to be away this summer. I'm traveling, I'm busy, my capacity is generally lower. And that's completely fine because planning your summer doesn't mean grinding through it with no break. It means being intentional, not reactive. So let's talk about the capacity because this is where so many designers needlessly turn money away. And if you know you're away in September, for argument's sake, you don't slam your doors shut. You look at your diary either side of your time off and you simply communicate it. It's all in that communication piece. And here's exactly what it sounds like. You say to a client, I'd love to get started. We absolutely can. We can do your consultation and your concept this side of summer, but I want to be transparent with you. Once we sign off your concept, your design direction won't start until the second week of September because I'm actually actually on on your leave. Does that timeline work for you? And you know what? Most clients will say, that is absolutely fine. We are very happy with that structure because you've actually told them. You've gone in and set the expectation, you've held the boundary, and you've kept the project moving forward. You haven't lost the work, you've simply scheduled it with integrity into your diary because you are forward planning. You are thinking about your projects and your pipeline. So flip the whole story in your head. Okay, quiet isn't a problem to survive. Quiet is a planning window, it's a gift. We plan our summers, like I said, in April and May. We plan our autumns in June and July. The calm is where the strategy happens. The designers who treat July as a dead loss are the very same ones panicking in September. And if this is landing, I want you to reach out to me. Because the ones who treat July as their planning season are the ones with a full, beautiful autumn diary. Same summer, completely different outcome. And the only variable is what you decide to do with it. Okay, so if the 90-day ripple is the why, let me give you the what. Okay, the single most powerful do-it-to-day habit I know. And it costs you nothing but a few little minutes and a little courage, okay? And this is something that I like to call the virtual shop front. So another designer in my community asked me recently, what kind of Instagram content actually leads to serious inquiries and not just engagement? And here's the thing it's not really about the content as such. And yes, obviously, content matters, however, it's about how you treat the people who show up. So let me give you the reframe that changed everything for me when I started out. I want you to think of your social media as a virtual shop front. Imagine you had a beautiful boutique on the on a gorgeous high street, and every time someone new follows you, picture a little bell ringing above the door as they walk into your shop. Now, if you were standing in that beautiful shop and a customer walked in, would you sit in the back room and ignore them? Of course you wouldn't. You'd come out, you'd smile, you'd say hello. Hello, how lovely to have you here. Is there anything I can help you with? So why on earth do you let people walk into our virtual shop, our Instagram, our social media, and you just ignore them? Someone new follows you, the bell rings, and we do absolutely nothing. We let them wander back out without as much as a hello, how are you? So here is your task, and I generally want you to do this today. When a new follower comes in, go and say hello, something warm and human. It's so lovely to have you here. I'd love to know how you found me and what drew you to my brand and my business. Is there anything I can help you with? That is it. No hard sell. You are just simply opening the nurture conversation the way you would do in a real shop. And then you pay attention. Who are these people? If someone replies with, Oh, I just love your work and I'd love to work with you one day, that is a warm lead who's just walked into your shop. You nurture that warm lead, you build the rapport. But if you look at your followers and it's 90% friends and family, you know, then I'm gonna be really honest with you, my love. You can sell all day long and you'll still be talking to a brick wall. You need to ensure that your content and how you're showing up aligns with your ideal audience. And obviously, there is so much more we can do with social media. I would be here all day talking about it, but you need to be far more active in getting the right people through the door in the right place. And before anyone tells themselves they don't have enough followers for this, you know, to even matter, let me give you a number. When we started Design Boss Diary, we started our page from absolute zero. We did over £100,000 in under 12 months with fewer than 500 followers. Under 500. Let that just land for a moment. And this was the exact tactic. Every single person who followed me, we understood who they were and why they were there. We made a little note, we built a list, we knew our hot leads, our warm leads, and who'd just come in, who drifted out, because we treated every follower like a real human being walking into our shopping center, into our virtual shop, our little boutique. It was never a numbers game, it was knowing your people game, and that is available to every single one of you today, whatever your follow account is. So I want you to go in and really look at your account and understand what you could make different. And while you're in there, make your shop front actually sellable. A surface level bio, it doesn't cut it anymore. State clearly who you serve and who your niche is for. You know, put your location and your name so the algorithm can find you. And we absolutely do love doing the three-pin posts here. You know, people want to land down on your page and you want to capture them straight away, welcoming them, the type of services, why you do what you do, your unique advantage point. That all should be at the top in a beautiful pinned post or at least three-pin posts. That's why they're there. It's using the platform, a free platform, to your advantage. Okay. Now, the shop front is one spoke of a bigger wheel, and I don't want you to do it once and wonder why nothing has happened. The magic is in the rhythm of this. So let me give you the momentum wheel and things that are done every single week, keep your pipeline turning over so you never hit that cliff edge again. Now, each week you ask yourself, you know, who am I reaching out to this week? Am I looking at how the market's performing? Am I connecting with the contractors and trades and suppliers that I should really be connecting with? Who could refer me? Am I tapping into all of those local groups, content, content, sponsorship? Where could my business be sat? Am I showing up consistently with my content, having real conversations, reaching out to new people to nurture? And here is the word weekly, not once, not in a panic. The whole point is consistency, but you have to remember the ripple. You do these things steadily for four, six weeks, and then you review the data. You can't just do something and after seven or ten days say, This isn't really working for me. You're not giving your business a chance. You need to understand what has come into the business, what's moved, where did warm conversations go, where did where did leads go? And you can adjust and keep turning the wheel. But this is how you build genuine, genuine lead generation, not a frantic marketing blast when you're frightened, followed by total silence when you're busy. It's a calm, consistent weekly rhythm, so that September and October and November are already quietly filling up, whilst everyone else could be panicking. And like I say, it is the 90-day ripple effect. You really want to think about how are you doing things and what would you do differently. Okay, so let me bring this all the way back home. The quiet summer is only a trap if you let it catch you. June and July are not the months to coast, they are amazing planning months. They're pipeline months, the months where a magnetic September is quietly built behind the scenes. While everyone else takes the foot off the gas, you're really going to keep that wheel turning. And I don't want you to walk away from this overwhelmed with a hundred things to do. I want you to do just one thing. Pick one, whichever lit you up the most this morning in this conversation. Maybe it's going into your followers and saying hello to five new people who've walked into your shop. Maybe it's having one summer consultation conversation frame with a clear September lead time. Maybe it's finally sharpening that bio. Just one thing today, that's how the muscle starts, and that's how momentum begins. Because here is the truth. What you do this week ripples out to September. So let's make this week your autumn starts paying you. Let's make this week the week that you really step into your new leadership position in business. Let's make this week the week that autumn is going to absolutely be phenomenal for you. And because I want July to be so magnetic for you, not just busy but aligned. I'm running something that I'm so excited about. And for the whole of July, I'm hosting a free alignment and abundance challenge, a daily practice to raise your frequency around your desires, your visibility, calling in your ideal clients, calling in money, and it's completely free and it is the perfect companion to everything we've talked about today because the strategy and the energy have to move together. And if you'd love to join us, come and find me over on Instagram, send me the word July, and I will add you to the list because let's go into this summer aligned, intentional, and building while everyone could potentially be coasting. Thank you so much for spending the start of the week with me. Go and do your one thing, and I will see you next Monday for another Powerful Packed podcast.