Ep 36 Transcript: Mastering Client Relations with Sonia Barney

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors in spelling or inaccuracies in the spoken words.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And today I have an incredibly talented interior designer with me today. This is Sonia Barney from Sonia Barney Designs and she's out of Idaho Falls in Idaho. And I'm really excited to have her on the show today because I met her at an event in Las Vegas in the summer of this year of 2024.

And I was just absolutely blown away by some of the things that this woman is doing. Now, if you know me, you know that I am very process oriented and I love a good system. And this woman has really nailed down a great system. I think it's gonna be really important for everyone who's listening today. We're gonna be talking about the client journey, understanding the journey that your client is on and how to manage their expectations because she is doing this incredibly well.

But I'm to start by talking a little bit about who she is because not only is she an incredibly talented interior designer with a bachelor's degree in interior design and over 18 years of experience, but she's also super mom as well. And I don't use that term lightly. We all have our own capes for different things, but she is raising two autistic boys and showing that you can be a successful female entrepreneur and still balance that home life. And is it perfect every day? Probably not.

And I'm sure she'll be probably the first one to attest to that. But she's really learned how to navigate both her business and her home life and the systems of processes she has in place. I know are a big part of that. So Sonia, thank you so much for coming on the show. Welcome. Thank you, Shauna Lynn. You've praised me way too high. I probably would never put the cape on myself, but thank you. And I think most women don't. And that's one of the reasons why I like to kind of throw it on every woman that I can.

I'm not looking for everyone to feel as though they have to reach this unrealistic expectation, but the reality is that what we do in our day-to-day lives is superhero quality. And I know that that's, you're no exception to that rule. So I appreciate you taking the time to come on the show and talk a little bit about what you're doing. I know in your bio, you actually say that you're a self-proclaimed nerd who loves problem solving and creating thoughtfully organized plans of both your design projects and your business. So.

I want to kind of take things back a little bit. What got you into interior design in the first place? So I, you know, probably when it first came up, is when I was young, HGTV came out, we all got inspired by it, trading spaces, all those things. yes. So I know that that's not reality, but that's what sparked the interest. And I just took as many classes as I could eventually got into a program.

at a nearby university and I've really enjoyed getting into it. But I'll admit, it took a little bit for me to realize, this is not TV. This is not, what they saw is not real. And I'm not saying that they weren't talented designers on those TV programs, but Hollywood obviously shortens the timeframe and gives this unrealistic expectation of what.

Design is for us and design is for other people. I know we'll get into that later, but that's gonna come back full circle. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I got my bachelor's degree, worked in Phoenix as a high-end kitchen and bath designer, loved that. And then after I started having children move back to Idaho and have enjoyed working here, well, okay, I did take a tiny break because of my children. As you said, they have autism.

Anybody who sees them now would probably say it's not that severe. It wasn't always that way when they were young. It was nonverbal running into walls, hurting themselves, type thing. So I had to focus on them getting that therapy, doing all of that. And so by the time we were more in school and they had, you know, there were uninterrupted hours in the day that I could focus on something else. That's when I decided to open my business and have been doing that since 2015.

wow. And I'm sure it was quite a change, you know, being in business for yourself and trying to manage the home life versus, you know, even though when you're working for someone else, it's not quite punching a clock when you're in the interior design industry. As we all know, there's a there's still lot of flexibility to it, but you can't turn off your brain because interior designers don't know how to turn off the ideas that are running through their heads. But at the same time, there's a little less responsibility. You're not quite as concerned about where the next project's coming from and where the next paycheck's coming from.

versus when you're running your own business and then balancing your home life. So what did that feel like when you were transitioning into your own business? It was very small at the beginning. Again, we still had lots of therapies and interventions and picking up and dropping off from school, there was still a lot. So I only put in the hours that I had available. If it was two or four hours a day, that was it. And I was fine with it because I would just take projects

on referral basis here and there. It was very much more of a hobby style business at the beginning. And also because I didn't really know how to run a business. So I didn't really know what I was doing. was like, I'm doing my designs. I know how to design. I didn't really legitimately have all of my ducks in a row. So let's just say I look at those first three, four years as training wheels were still on.

I was very much just dabbling in it as I was still trying to be mom to little boys who needed a lot. And so I was like, I give myself forgiveness for not being a great business owner at that time. That was not where my mind was. But at the same time, I'd also give yourself even more grace because you were doing something that a lot of people take a lot of years to figure out and that is setting boundaries. And I think there's probably a lot of people who are listening to this who are thinking,

How the heck did you manage to be so disciplined to say, if I've only got two hours, I'm only working for two hours and be able to turn things off and turn your attention back to your family. Any tips on how to navigate that? Well, it helps when you didn't have a lot of clients. I will say that. So that's fair. Yeah. mean, it really, I didn't even have, like I had my website. I was able to cobble one together, but I wasn't on even Google because I didn't know you had to do that.

And so there was a lot of those basic skills. I'm like, people didn't know I existed unless it was really referral. And so it really kind of just went slow and that's okay. I'm like, took on what I could handle and I was grateful for the projects I had, but I know I would have frowned if I had a huge influx of clients. I wouldn't have been able to service them properly. And I think I would regret that more.

than having just a little bit here and there. That's fair. And I appreciate that. And so your company has since grown and has flourished really. And you are often navigating multiple projects at once. And there's a lot of challenges, of course, that come along with that. And so that kind of gets us a little bit into developing your processes. would you say you had processes from the very beginning?

you said you didn't really have the whole business thing, but did you have some processes in place? Basic ones. More of the maybe the design process in my head of how I done it when I worked for other firms or how I had done it when I was teaching other students because for a while there I also taught at the university I had gone to. And so I applied some of those processes that I knew, but I was very flexible. Like if a client said, hey, I want to do it this way, I'd be like, okay.

And I'll be honest, I was kind of experimenting and figuring out what processes were best. that was trying to figure that out and be like, well, this one was hourly and we met this many times. And then I met with this client and they wanted this and they want, and there was that trial and error period that again was very informative. And I look back on and it's really helped shape where we are now, because I can use that, those experiences and be like,

no, I didn't like that or yes, that was a nice effective way for them to receive the information and to be excited about the project. you have any experiences of where things went terribly wrong? Where you're like, this could have been better managed or were you finding that as you're developing the processes, things are of clicking into place really well? It wasn't until about 2020, which I know everybody hates that time of you.

live because it was COVID, but that was when things started to escalate in my business and I had more projects on my plate. And I had this one that was a remodel and it, I was very fearful it was going to go sideways. It luckily didn't, but with trying to manage it around the COVID and the fear and everything, there was just a lot of potential issues. And since then,

with more construction projects that I've been involved with, I have over and over again, just felt like the clients are angry. I don't know if you ever get that, where the clients come back to you and they're just mad. And I actually proposed to my team about a year and a half ago, it's like, we've got to come up with a way to help them understand.

the expectations because the contractors aren't doing it. guess my naivety, had assumed the contractor at some point would sit them down and be like, it's going to get messy. It's going to get expensive. It's going to take a long time and you're going to hate it. And you're possibly going to hate us, but we promise it will get together. No, they're telling them all rainbows and sunshine and no offense to the contractors because they're trying to sell the project too, but they're, they're telling them.

almost unrealistic expectations that we'll get this done. It will be quick, no problem. And they still to this day, probably over promise some things. And I'm like, no, let's not, let's not promise that we can break ground in a month because there's all of these other steps we need to put into place first. Don't say that, say, let's get these steps done. And hopefully within a month or two or three, we can do it, give them, and then tell them what's to be expected through it. So.

because I had had these mid project, the clients melting down in front of me, so angry and I'm taking it personally. Cause I'm like, I'm so sorry, what could I have done? But these are things that were out of my control. I was like, okay, how can we better prepare our clients for the journey they're about to embark on? And that's when I showed it to you at Power Talk Friday, the client journey map. This is how

helped us be able to show them a nice wide range of what to expect during the client journey, including their emotions, including some money, the uncomfortable things that people don't want to talk about. And I've been really pleased since we've implemented, we've had such a better experience with clients that I'm not having those mid project meltdowns. And so one of the things, you know, I think

People often hear about the client journey and, you know, creating process maps. I'm huge on creating process maps, but what we normally do on those process maps is we talk about what we're going to do and what they can expect. Like, so step one, we're going to do this. Like I we're going to do a consultation. We're going to create your concepts. We're going to start sourcing materials, et cetera. And it's all very factual and black and white. But what was really unique about what you did with your journey map was you dove into

exactly how it's going to look from the client's perspective and really got their like captured the, like you said, the uncomfortable part of it, the things that they're not going to like, the things that they don't want to hear, but you're not hiding it, you're not sugarcoating it. And you're seeing it from their perspective as business owners, whatever business you're in as business owners, I see website after website after website that talks about what you do.

And it talks about it from the perspective of what you do, not about what they get, about how they benefit, the good, the bad, the ugly, all of that. We talk about in marketing, for example, in marketing, you always have to look at what is it that the client really wants? What is it that they're hoping to get out of this? Because if you just list all of the features of your services and say, well, we do two-hour consultations. Is that a good thing? I don't know the difference as a homeowner.

Like, do I want a two hour consultation? Do I want a three hour consultation? Do I want a 30 minute consultation? I don't know what's best. So instead, if you stay with the benefits of it, like, and this allows us to do X, Y, and Z so that you can X, Y, Z, you know, so it's being able to put it into their terms and their perspectives. But I will admit in my own experience, even with process maps, I've never really dove into it the way that I saw that you had. And one of first things I said to you was I'm like, can I get a copy of this? I just wanted to.

share with my team, not from the, we're not doing the same journey, we're not doing the same process, but I wanted to show how you communicated it. And you've got on this map, let's talk about this a little bit, you've got pricing expectations. No one wants to talk about pricing. And you can't say if it's gonna cost $5,000 or $50,000 or $500,000 because every project is different, but you can identify at least where the prices are going up. Like where are you spending the most amount of money?

Where does it feel really expensive and like you're bleeding yourself dry of every dime that you have. And other times where it just feels like things are kind of trickling a little bit. In addition to their emotions, you have little emojis throughout that show them, okay, well, I'm happy here. I'm gonna be a little upset here. And the contractors, going back to your point, the contractors are, they're focused on the marketing aspect of it and getting the sale. And the sale is the end result.

we are going to create the home of your dreams. That's in some way or shape or form, that is basically the phrase, the ideal that every contractor, every designer, every renovator is selling is the dream of what they think they're going to live in. But not everyone's talking about what they're going to have to do to get that, right? Like, I mean, if I want six pack abs, I'm gonna be told you're gonna get six pack abs and you're gonna get it with.

only working out three minutes a day and eat whatever you want and you'll have this in two months. Like that all sounds great, but it's not really realistic, right? Like there is additional work that needs to be done in order to achieve those goals. And I might be able to get into some decent shape using some kind of hacks and techniques, but if I'm not super disciplined, I'm not actually going to get into shape. But if my trainer or the weight loss programs were selling me on

All right, so listen, it's gonna be grueling. You're gonna have to give up all these foods. You're gonna work out two hours a day. Like if they're selling me on that, I'm running away. So you're trying to find that balance of I need to sell you the dream that you want, but I also need to make sure that your expectations are being managed because I want you to still like me at the end of this. how did you, so since you, how did your team react? Let's start with that. How did your team react when you were like, I wanna tell them the good, the bad and the ugly? Were they on board? I think they were, but I also at the same time don't think they fully understood.

what the process was in their mind. So, I mean, there was a huge benefit for us just going through the process of creating this map and not only solidified what I was seeing in my head and putting it down and actually categorizing it. Like that was huge. What a, just a great, you know, experience for me. But then I was able to share that with my employees and it.

clicked a bunch of ahas in their brains. They're like, that's what you mean. Oh, this helps. And it's a great training tool for my employees as they come in. This is what we're going to expect because, the client journey map has these little icons that show some basic information, but it also has actions and expectations in each phase. That really helped my employees to see.

this is what we're doing in each phase and they could chunk it out and have an understanding. So they were completely on board with it just for our internal purposes. But as an external use, it's so much easier to explain it to a client. You think of all these different types of personalities out there. There's people who want to know the nitty gritty. They want to know X, Y, and Z, everything that's going to be involved in a process. And then you've got the other ones that are like, I don't really care.

Just tell me, it done. just kind of want to have a good overview. And I'm tooting my horn a little bit, but I'm like, I like that our map kind of allows that it has big graphics for the most important. Like if you're just a skimmer, you can just go across and be like, okay, this is what to expect it to be different phases, the money, the experience, the timeframe. Great. But if you are a nitty gritty person, you're going to then read the small print that has the bullet action items under each.

process for each phase. And then they'll be like, OK, this helps me. And there's so much that we could talk about in these design meetings. We know from experience, even though you tell a client that at that point in the project, you're going to have to pay this, this, this, and this when the contractor goes. If I tell them that six months before it happens, they'll say we never talked about it.

Not because that they're liars or cheaters or anything like that. They just can't remember. It wasn't written down. It wasn't clear enough. There was so much that I was telling them. This helped us make sure that all the expectations, all the information was already there. And it was up to them to read it and then ask me questions. And it's helped us all stay on the same page, not waste our time and really

focus on the design and let them just to go back to the map later on and be like, that's right. She did expect it. That's what she said. Okay. And even, mean, going back to that too, of just, whenever you're getting, as you're moving through things and you're navigating things, it's a check-in for them as well of like, okay, we're here then in the process. Like, you know exactly where you are and this is where we're going. And I mean, anytime we're navigating anything in life, I take a look at your GPS, your GPS is always, you are right here.

this is where you're going, this is how you're going to get there. If there was a car accident on the road, you're gonna know about it, like, you're gonna be delayed by about 30 minutes here because there was this accident on the road. And so you're showing on that map where some potential hiccups can come in, where some potential challenges are gonna come in. And it's very different. A lot of people are like, well, it's all in my contract. Sure. How many contracts have you read? Like, have you read your cell phone provider's contract recently? Because I haven't, you know, like it's-

Your contract is there to protect both you and the client and it is important. And yes, you should go over it in detail with them. But if I have to refer, there's nothing that I hate more than when I have to refer to my contract to figure things out. Let's say I've got an insurance claim. Well, now I've got to read through 40 pages of documentation for my insurance just to understand whether or not something is included. And I had one insurance company once upon a time that had this cool little grid that basically said like, if it's this, here's how much coverage. it's this, here's how much coverage. And it was just a quick little synopsis.

Did it cover every single detail? No, but it was enough to get me started. And so to that point, know, when your clients are feeling like, okay, I need to budget for things and like, a lot of money's coming out. And I know in my experience in interior design, clients will often get to a point where they're like, spending so much money and I'm not seeing results yet, because the results don't really come until most of that money's been spent. And so.

if you can lay out those expectations for them where they can go back to like, yeah, okay, I that tracks here's where results are and we're still over here. So it really does help to navigate things. And I think you also brought this up though as well of you're having the conversations too. You're not also just relying on, got this visual graphic. It's a great check-in for them but you're still having the conversations along the way. For sure. So I give this to them, like they've already contracted with me.

a mini version of this in the welcome book. And I briefly touched on it, especially if we're going to be doing a full construction project being like, okay, tell me what your contractor said, or, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to lay a little bit of truth in that initial consult and be like, yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't fully expect it to be that long, but you know, I'm going to tell them exactly what I think from what knowledge I had been given at that initial consultation. don't have a time either.

But if they do contract with me prior to the design kickoff meeting, they get the digital form of this. And I say, we're going to talk about it at design kickoff. I'm giving it to you now. So you have it in your email as well as have time to look over it. We'll talk about some things. And then I give them a printed one. And I say, remember, this is where we are. We're in the first design phase. And these are the things that you're going to expect. The trickiest one.

Like a couple of the main tricky hiccup spots will be when we go to bid. It takes a long time to get bids longer than people even realize longer than sometimes I feel like, like really it's taking two months to get construction bids. It sometimes does. And I'll explain to them that because there's a labor shortage and the right people that we want to work with aren't giving bids as quickly because they're working on tons of other projects, but we like working with them. So be patient. And I've actually had clients come back to me saying,

I know we're at the bid phase and I just keep going back to your map and realizing, yes, you had already said it's going to be hard here. And I'm like, thank you. You were actually using it. And they were, instead of being mad at me, they were like saying thank you. And I'm like, no, I know this is a painful spot because we designed it you're so excited and you want to get started. And there's not much I can do because it's out of my hands. And that's the other hard part is like that whole construction phase, most of it's out of my hands. So I'm.

trying not to tell them that when it's not in my hands, it's bad. It's just, it's the reality of construction. Construction is not an easy thing. And it's not what they say on TV. Let's go back to HGTV. It doesn't happen in two weeks, guys. It literally, that has ruined client expectation. Cause they do think that I could walk through a house, do a 3D model of it.

and give them three options and all they do is pick and run with it. That's not reality. You don't understand the teams of people behind these wonderful designers who are making that happen. we have to kind of re-educate the clients and put them back on the path of what it's going to look like for you. And I just go back to what LuAnn Nigara says, in my experience, this is how it is. And I'm like, I don't know.

how your cousin had it happen over in Florida, but we live in Idaho and this is the experience with these contractors. So you're welcome. Yeah. What I think most humans by nature, we like to control things. Whether you consider yourself a flat out control freak or not, we don't do well. Most humans with things that are out of our control. And so

That's where managing expectations comes in because when you set the expectations, you're giving them back a little bit of that sense of control. It doesn't mean that they can actually control the process, but they can control their own feelings and navigating things because they understand the expectations. If you were to go in for surgery next week and you ask your doctor, well, how long is it gonna take? I don't know. How long will recovery take? I don't know. Will I be in any pain? I don't know. Or if the doctor set unrealistic expectations, then,

You're going to be back to like, you I'm a runner, for example, you'll be back up and running in two days. And it's taken me three weeks. Well, now I'm frustrated because those expectations that I was given are telling me that something is going wrong and I'm failing in some way. And so when we manage those expectations with our clients, we give them a bit of that sense of control just by giving them knowledge really is power. They have a better understanding now and you're explaining things that probably no one else has ever explained to them. I've even worked with clients where they've had interior designers in the past.

And they're still like, I didn't think it was going to take this long. Well, you've worked with interior designers. Well, yeah, but they did things a little bit differently. Yeah. Cause we all do things a little bit differently. So that's the other thing, like to your point of like, don't know what your cousin in Florida dealt with, but it would, for all, you know, it was a small project. And also, let me be clear on this when it comes to interior design, a small project does not necessarily mean like a powder room, for example, because you're

Yeah, it's not about the size of the room. The size of the project is not dictated necessarily by the size of the room. It's about the scope of work that's involved. You know, so there's often those expectations as well. And I know we actually we talked about it at that at the Power Talk Friday event that we were at with LuAnn Nigara where we talked about, you know, how people have this idea of like, well, I just want to do a bathroom renovation. It's just a bathroom renovation. There is no such thing as just a bathroom renovation. I know this is not

an interior design podcast, but let's just be clear about this for a second. A bathroom renovation is a major renovation. It doesn't matter how you slice it. And so, yeah, talking about the, I've always said the most powerful phrase that we have in our vocabulary is in my experience, because that's essentially what people are hiring you for. They want your experience. And the more that you can give them of that experience, the better. Because another thing that I have found in my experience is that,

It's hard to sell someone on the value of that whole map that you've created until they're going through things. So you, if they haven't been through a process before, they don't understand how much it's going to suck if their expectations are not managed. So that's even like a part of your selling feature. And yet it's one of the hardest things to sell people on, because if they've never worked with a designer before, never done a major renovation, they don't know all the things that could go wrong. And honestly, when we do our job really well and things go pretty darn smooth,

They have no idea how badly it could have gone. They're like, that's just, so we've now said there's, that's just how things happen, you know? But it happens that way because you're organizing, because you've got that really well laid out for them. I think it does do another additional selling point that if you're afraid to do a map because you're afraid to share the hiccups, the challenging parts of what it's gonna entail, being honest, being clear,

I say to be clear is to be kind. I'm like, it shows so much more trust value. If you can say, I'm to be very honest here. It's not going to be great. It's going to be X, Y, and Z. It's going to be doing this, but I've got your back. Do you see this map? I've got your back and these are the touch points of which I'm going to be involved. So even though you're feeling like I'm showing you that you're going to have a potentially terrible project, guess what? It's construction. It's going to be that way.

I'm going to be in your back corner the whole time and you now have a partner who's going to guide you through that process. You're not alone. And I think that's a huge selling point for people. They don't want to just be like, well, they just put it together a pretty design and walked away. That's not what we're here for. If you want me to be there from point A to point B, I'm going to be there for you. And this is the map that's going to help us do it.

Like I can't emphasize enough how huge it is that you're navigating those and managing those expectations because no matter what kind of business you're operating, it is so incredibly important to manage those expectations. And if you tell someone that something's gonna suck a little bit, they're going to appreciate it that much more. I think if there's one thing that we've also learned, especially in a time of...

so much misinformation, so many ways to find information. I mean, I can Google things. I've got my AI robots that I can chat with about things. And it can be difficult at times to sort of differentiate between what's a false promise and what's real. So when someone is telling you the negative and the downside to things, it's easier, as you said, to build that trust factor and to believe them that much more. And I think we all

really feel like we need to be able to trust something, especially when we're going to be spending tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars on a project. And it doesn't matter if your project is a $5,000 project or a $500,000 project, whatever money you're spending is probably a lot of money for you. So it doesn't really matter. Like, you know, you might think like, well, they have so much money and it's fine for them. It doesn't mean that they're not, that it doesn't mean that they're taking it lightly, that they're spending a whole lot of money.

And that goes again with every product, every service that's out there, whatever we choose to spend our money on, we have a certain expectation of what we're going to get in return for it. And when something doesn't meet that expectation or fall short in some way, we're incredibly disappointed. And so to be able to navigate that, and especially, you know, one thing that the younger generations are expecting is that authenticity, that reality to things. And they don't like things feeling false and incorrect. They like,

to know that things are real. And that's something that, you know, I for my generation, I'm a Gen Xer. So my generation is very much in that shifting of the generation before me. Like my parents' generation was very much don't ask, don't tell. You hide a lot of things. And as Gen Xers, we started breaking through that, but there was still a lot of like dancing around the lines there. And so I think it can be difficult for a Gen Xer, you know, hearing what you're saying, saying like, you want me to tell them things are gonna hurt? Like, I feel like.

That's gonna reflect poorly on me, but no, you're absolutely right. It's gonna reflect positively on you because you told the truth. And if they go with someone else and not you, because that other person didn't tell the truth, well, they're in for quite an awakening when things start to go wrong. Right. And that's, we can't choose that for them. And we just want to make sure that we are working with the people that will appreciate this. I just see your...

framed picture behind you that says authenticity. hear that word so much now. We want people to be authentic, but we also don't want to bore people with logistics and everything. If there's a way that you can put it into a single document, do it. Whatever your business is, do it because it's a great exercise for you internally, as well as, I mean, I think it's feature.

that will differentiate you among your competitors too. absolutely. Is it something that you are using as a selling feature of your business? Or is it something that is more they get to experience it once they've signed on with you, but isn't necessarily something you're using in your sales or your messaging? I haven't put it really in the messaging, no, but my messaging is still along the lines of organization and being your partner and guiding you through the process.

whether they, I haven't said the word client journey map, but on my website, I have the mini version of this that kind of gives them a quick oversight of what the process will be that they get in the welcome book. So they can already see that, she has an organized linear process that is for the most part, and we'll all come back to that, for the most part covers 99 % of the projects.

And I'm sure every interior designer out there is thinking what I thought when I was trying to build this map. All my projects are different, like how do I start? Yeah, so that's where I had to come back to a little bit of nuts and bolts of being like, OK, let's look at the typical project or the ideal project that we want and break it into those phases. So my client journey map, I know the audience can't see it, but I've got a design phase, a construction phase.

furniture and styling, and then photo shoot. If they hire me only for the design book, then I still give them this client journey map. And I say, here you go. We're going to stay right here in the design phase. And then I'm going to print those books and you're going to get them. But the rest of this, you are still going to experience whether I'm there or not. So I would love to be there.

I guarantee the process will be smoother if I'm there with you. But if you really just want the design phase, great. This is it. And the rest is yours to just enjoy and see what a typical project looks like. Right. And as a business coach, I work with a number of interior designers. And you couldn't be more right when you're saying, well, it depends. And I will also say this is not exclusive to interior designers. One of the first things I do when I'm coaching someone

is we do a three hour session where we dive into every core service that you offer, because it tends to be service professionals that I'm working with, and we dig into the core services that you're offering and we break down exactly what they look like step by step. And I can't tell you how many times I get, well, it depends. Well, it depends. And one of the things that I work with my clients on is, we need to make that it depends into more of our policy is or our processes, because

Yes, there's always gonna be things that are a little outside the lines, but the closer you can stick to the same process every time and it works, the happier clients are going to be. When something isn't going right, I always look to the process first of, what's happening in our process that this isn't, that this keeps, like with my own team, for example, let's say the same mistakes being made.

over and over again on a project, I'm gonna look at, what's our process for this? Because there's a way to make sure that we're not making that same mistake over and over and over again. We wanna ensure the best experience possible and the best way to do that is to have a well-defined process. And again, goes even with my own team, like, well, it depends. Does it though? You know, again, a lot of it's really quite typical and sure you might veer just slightly outside of those lines sometimes, but for the most part, you're sticking into that box and the more you do,

the better the experience is for everyone. And I think, you know, it goes back to even just understanding who your clients are. If you're trying to do everything, if you're trying to do all the different types of projects that are out there, so like, well, that's design related. I can do that too, but it's not something that you're overly familiar with. It's not something that you have experienced with. It's not something that you're an expert at. You're going to find that you're jumping all over those lines all the time. And whereas if you kind of stick to, well, I know my clients like to do...

this and this is how where I'm going to going to stay and I'm going to market specifically to those people, wouldn't it be better to provide just this amazing experience to the people that really fit into your client base rather than trying to do all the things for all the different people and veering so far off your process because you can't have a process for absolutely everything when you're doing that many different things. What is that experience going to be like for your client? Can you get it done in the end? Sure, probably, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's what's going to fuel your business and help you to grow your business.

because you'd mentioned very early on in this episode that as you building your business, majority of your business was brought to you through referral and that's very common in design. Well, I can't imagine you getting a whole lot of referrals if people aren't having a great experience either. Right. And I think it's people keep saying, well, every project's different because one's a bathroom remodel and then the other one's a big home new build. Yeah, those are two different projects but it doesn't mean your process

has to be different. And it's going back to get rid of what the idea is of what the project parameters are, what the scope of work is, how do you do it? What is the first meeting, the second meeting, the third meeting look like? What mistakes have been made in the past? And again, that trial and error period in the first several years of my business were huge in helping build this. I don't expect a new designer to

fully know what the client journey map is. Or even if they put one down, it will be tweaked later on because you'll figure out what you like and what you don't like. But if you can start figuring out what your internal and external process is, it will just streamline it and make it easier to keep the train moving down the track at the same speed, no matter what size the project is. Obviously there's going to be a proportional difference of time with a big house versus one bathroom, but

it will still be chugging along at a good speed. so managing that and understanding, okay, these are my typical ideal projects. Let's stay there. I'll admit, I have projects that are outside this scope. Those are hourly consultation only. I'm not doing background work. That's a completely different beast. They don't get this map because they're just getting a design buddy for a couple of hours. Why would I give them?

this, I might, if it's like a big construction project, and I think that they might need it just so they can see it. But if they're not paying me the big bucks and they just want some help picking out some tile and flooring, I, that's not a process I have to document in this way. It does, I'm not the guide at that point. I am literally hired just for a couple hours.

This is for the projects where you are the control. You are the conductor of that train. So figure out what it is that you want to conduct and put it on paper. Well, I'm sure that pretty much every entrepreneur has had the experience as well, you know, in kind of talking about going outside the process. Probably every entrepreneur has had the experience of working with a client where they want to skip 10 steps ahead and we've got to pull them back to what we can't do that step until we've done this. Having that journey.

outline that way will just help them so significantly in understanding kind of where you're at and some of the repercussions even of like, well, okay, so you're on step six over here and we're on step two. So do you see how maybe perhaps trying to, for example, select the sofa that absolutely has to go into the room before we've actually done the space planning and figured out which walls are coming down might not be the most ideal way to do things.

You know, like, yeah, sure, if you want to buy that sofa and you want us to work around it, we can, but now you're limiting things on what we can and cannot do because we're working around your sofa. So maybe we just don't place that order just yet. You know, and I'm using, again, the interior design example, but this falls into every type of business in everything that we're doing, you know, even just simply from getting your hair done. Well, if we're going to, if I'm going to be doing my hair color,

And then I also want extensions and it will ship with the extensions and before the color or the color and before the extensions, probably the extensions and before the color, right? So it's, there's all these different things, of course, that come into play and any business that you're in, the more you can keep your clients on track and understand what your process is, the better you can avoid them skipping steps because they just got so excited about the end result and the end process. They wanted to skip all the steps in between, but if they can understand why it's important that they don't by seeing that.

that visual of the map as well as it's really, really helpful. And again, I think, you you talked about it earlier that you've got both the visual of the map as well as some of the nitty gritty words and verbiage on the map is that it does help to appeal to everyone because I talk about the visual of it. I think most people do appreciate having that visual representation, but some people don't want the visual. They want the words more than anything else. So it's important that you have both of those things on there. And I like that.

You know, one of the great things that came from it too, just this whole alignment and keeping verbiage and all of that the same. All of the design phases also match our invoices names. So it's helping clients say, I just got the design concept invoice. That means I must be in that part of the phase. So doing that also helps keep the clients organized. So I just want to put that out there like,

It really does help internally and keeps things aligned. If you figure out good names that you can repeat and put in your process. But going back to your comment about clients who get upset or one, not, I shouldn't say upset, wanting to skip steps. If I haven't, if they're trying to skip steps, steps, it's probably cause I didn't fully go over again, the client journey map with them. And so it's at those points where they're like,

Well, I like that. Why don't you go order it? And I'm like, well, I'm not ordering anything till the whole, you've selected everything and we do one order. And she's like, but why? And this is recent client. again, I, it's nothing against her, but I've had to go back and be like, remember this is our process. And there is a method to my madness. If we do it, we stay organized. The reason a client, if you go into a home that's bill scattered and

mismatched and things. It's because they bought things out of impulse. Well, we don't want impulse buying anymore. We want conscious, thoughtful decision making. And in the end, it will be better. And you can always go back to the same conversation of you buy the sofa before the walls are done. That means you're storing the sofa where? We don't want to store the sofa somewhere. apply to their logic too. Like, yes, we will keep that in mind. I am earmarking that.

unless there happens to be an amazing sale and you're dead set on it, don't get it yet. Let's just wait. Well, so the other thing that you mentioned that you talked about how the names of the phases also match your invoices. And I wanted to really highlight what you're saying there as well, because it's not even just about the invoices themselves matching things, but it's the language that we use. How often and especially if there are multiple people involved in a project,

I don't know about you, when I do major renovation projects, my contractor has a whole team of people. And I know there's six different people involved and depending on what the issue is, it's a different person to go to. And so when you're dealing with that many different people on things, the easier the expectations can be set out and the better the language is applied to things, the easier it makes it. But if I have both a project supervisor and a site supervisor, those names kind of sound similar.

if I'm a homeowner and I've never worked on a construction project before. So I appreciate when things are really clearly defined as to who's doing what, what the differences are, and maybe even just name them a little bit different. I think in any industry, we get caught up in our own language sometimes, and we forget that our clients don't understand that same language. And so when you're using a word that they don't understand, like if you tell a client, you're going to be creating a concept board for them.

but they've never had a concept board before, those words don't necessarily make sense to someone outside of the interior design industry. So I love that you're saying how you're matching those names because you're trying to make it as easy as possible for the clients to be able to follow along. And yes, we are the experts. Whenever they're hiring you for your services, you are the expert. But that doesn't mean that you should be talking down to them. You wanna include them in language. If you've ever been to, I'm gonna use the...

medical teams as another example, if you've ever spoken to a doctor and they start telling you all the technical jargon about what is it they're going to be doing, and you're looking at them like, okay, so what does that mean though? Well, it means, and you know, back into the technical jargon. But will it hurt? you know? Put it in layman's terms, please. Right, exactly. And what area of my body is this in? you know, it's, we have to be able to speak their language. And I...

I can remember actually going to the dentist, this was back in my early 20s, and I'd never had a cavity before. And here I am in my early 20s and now I have a cavity. And so my dentist gets me in the chair and next thing I know she's coming at me with like a six inch needle. And I was like, hold on a second, what's going on there? She's like, well, I have to freeze the area. I was like, okay, so where are you freezing? She's like, well, I'm gonna freeze here and here. I'm like, so that's two needles that are coming at me? She's like, yeah. And she's getting kind of annoyed with me. And I said,

So I apologize for asking so many questions. I've never had a cavity before, so I've never had a filling done and I'm not really sure what the process is. And if you could just kind of walk me through it, that'd be really helpful. And she turns to me and she says, I've got eight years of experience or eight years of education plus my years of working as a dentist. Exactly how much of that would you like to understand? Is it just enough to get me through this procedure if you could? just, yeah. And I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to downplay your expertise. I think this is the challenge that sometimes the experts in their own fields

come across is, well, I need to be the expert. I need to talk the talk. Sure. But if you can't put it into a language that they're going to understand, no one wants to feel stupid. No one wants to feel like someone's talking down to them or that they should know something. And you don't want your clients just nodding along because, I guess I'm supposed to understand what the heck they're talking about. So I'll just nod along here. And then a couple of months from now, they're like, I didn't understand what you were talking about. I'm sorry. Now we're kind of in a bit of a pickle here.

You know, it's, so I just wanted to bring, bring us back to what you're talking about using that language because you kind of glossed over it. I'm like, that's a pretty important thing to be doing, you know? Yeah. Well, let's, let's dive into that a little bit. going back to being clear is to be kind, the more clear we can be, the better. And even in the interior design field, and I'm sure it's the same in other fields, multiple words can mean the same thing. Take your concept boards. Some other designers call them mood boards.

Right. Or inspiration boards or whatever it is. So I knew that and actually in our welcome book, we have a couple of pages dedicated to glossary terms. And I explained to the client saying, these are the terms that you'll hear me use that are unique to the industry and also unique to me. Like I, I didn't want to call myself a project manager for the sake of liability reasons. I didn't want to say I'm the contractor. So I avoided the term project manager.

So instead I'm a project coordinator, which probably essentially means the same thing in my mind, but to somebody else, they'll be like, well, you should be here on the job site every day because you're the project manager. No, no, no, I'm the project coordinator, meaning I'm helping coordinate and I'm a third member of the team. There's the contractor, you and me, but I'm here to help coordinate things. And I put that in there, those terms, so that again, if they come back later on being like, I didn't understand what you meant.

Well, let's go back to your glossary of terms or you can just go look at it yourself. You know, I want people to feel like they aren't confused. I actually would consider a personal failure if they said, yeah, a couple of meetings ago, I didn't know what you meant. And I just let you go with him. Like, tell me, I don't want you to not tell me that you don't understand something. But I think that's, you know, what I like is that you're, you're talking about choosing words that make sense and

really defining what they mean. And I think sometimes, especially as business owners, we get so caught up in the excitement of the doing the thing that we love to do. And then we want to come up with like these great titles for ourselves that mean nothing to anybody else. And so if we're not defining it properly, like we can have all the flowery words that we want to express who it is and what we're doing. But if we can't put it in simple terms that is easily translatable,

then the clients that we're working with are naturally going to be confused. So I like that you not only have clarity of those terms, but you've identified where the confusion might come from and what the differences and distinctions are. And I mean, frankly, yeah, project manager versus project coordinator might be a difference without a distinction at the end of the day for some people, but you've defined what that looks like in the scope of how you utilize it and what your roles and responsibilities are.

And that's what really matters. Because if someone's just going to Wikipedia or to Google and checking out what these terms mean there, they don't know necessarily how you're translating those terms. So we do want to ensure that we're being careful about that. People might be saying, well, what's the difference between a lead designer and a principal designer and project manager and the founder of the company and all these different things? And some companies, nothing. There's no difference. And other times there are. So it is important that we don't just assume that they understand

what our roles are. I know for my interior design company, every time we get a project, we send a nice little introduction of like, here's everyone on your team and here's what their roles and responsibilities are. So me as a CEO, am I involved in the day to day of every project? No, but do I know what's going on from a high level? Absolutely. And when my team gets stuck on something or when they're working through their designs, I am overseeing all of this.

but it doesn't mean that I'm going to be meeting with the clients and hammering out details to things. I trust my team to be doing all of that. So it's important that they understand what our roles look like. even in this conversation that we're having, I'm thinking to the back of my head, like, I could probably be more clear about that still, you know? And I think that that's the other thing that you mentioned earlier of, you're going to tweak these things. Don't expect to get it perfect. And also don't wait to get it perfect before releasing it out into the world. Just work towards

refining it in every client, every experience, every project that you have will help you to gain a better understanding as to how you might improve that. And that's the whole Kaizen effect of like you're constantly improving. So if you look at that from that perspective of how can I continually improve, don't worry about trying to get it perfect. Cause I think a lot of people also, and entrepreneurs especially tend to suffer from perfectionism. And I actually heard a stat the other day and I

don't recall who said it or what study it was, but it basically said that the most successful people figure out 70 % of what they need to know before moving forward, not 100%, 70%. So if you've got 70 % of your client journey, if 70 % of your process map figured out, 70 % of your terms figured out, get it out there and then continue to work to refine it. But you will never hit 100 % on anything. That's an unrealistic ideal that.

you're setting yourself up for failure for trying to achieve 100%. Because I mean, even Sonia, saying like, you've got this beautiful map. I've seen it myself. It's fantastic. Is it perfect? No. And you're going to discover different ways. It doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't work. It does work. But there's always a way that it can be improved on. And that's important to identify as well. Right. And because our business has changed too. Right. doesn't mean that in five years, I'm still going to want to do

my design worked this way, or I haven't found maybe the right contractor that can speed things up or do whatever. So yes, I love that 70 % rule because we do tend to, and this is a conversation we have a lot in the office of my, I love my employees. They may feel stuck because they don't know how to get forward. I'm like, I don't know fully how to get forward, but let's put something on paper first. Then.

we can move from that, but until there is some type of something, can't just live in our thoughts. It has to be put on paper or on the computer and then tweaked from then on. Right. Yeah. You have to take that first step. That's the most important part is that is that first step. And that's in, any journey in life, you know, that first step, you can't keep moving forward if you don't take that first step. But if you're afraid to take a first step because you want to have everything.

all the stars aligned, everything perfectly in a row. I mean, that's just not realistic, unfortunately. And I think that, I think we are embracing more imperfectionism over, you know, as a society, as a whole. And I that's a beautiful thing to witness, but sometimes we don't give ourselves enough grace and forgiveness behind the scenes for not having a hundred percent of things figured out. But the reality is that you're not supposed to, no one's supposed to. So you, but you have definitely,

really nailed down, as I said this from the beginning, you've really nailed it down, the client experience and managing their expectations. And you may not have it 100 % figured out, but certainly I'm sure your clients can attest to the fact that it is something that you have really put in a lot of thought and effort into. I know that probably people listening as well, like, don't have the time to do that. Start with just getting the initial thoughts down and start.

you know, what kind of tips would you give for anyone who's saying like, I don't even know where to get started. How would you say, like, how did you get started on this? I'll be honest, it was Googling other client journey maps, not necessarily for interior design, but there's a ton out there of what other companies, big companies, small companies all over the map have done to document their journey and figure out what one kind of looks like something that

you know, use them as inspiration. We're not having to recreate the wheel here. But then I built ours in Canva really easy and color blocking and everything. But if you can look at inspiration and start sketching on a piece of paper and have it in your head, you may have to go through it a few times. I would get it started and then I would show it to my employees and be like, okay, are we doing right here? Do we have the right information? Does this make sense?

I also think having somebody look at it who's not an interior designer. My admin lady is such a valuable member of our team because she has no experience in interior design world. She is fabulous. She has helped me organize half, I would say the majority of the spreadsheets that are being built and maintained in the project are done by her and I love it. But she will flat out say, I don't know what you mean by this. We'll be talking about it.

What do you mean? So she gives us perspective from a non-interior designer. And so we will often like she reads through our blogs. She reads through all of the client facing documents so that if there's something that doesn't make sense, she highlights it and says, this doesn't make sense to the lane, like to whoever would, who doesn't understand this or had never been through this. And it's so valuable to have that perspective. If you want it to be super client facing.

Absolutely. And I think that can be a challenge sometimes is that when we're so caught up in our own industries and speaking to our colleagues or employees who all understand what it that we're trying to communicate, it's easy to get a whole lot of yes men, a whole lot of like, yeah, this all makes sense and let's move things along. And I mean, I think we've all witnessed where, you see this ad on TV or on YouTube or on your phone or whatever, and you're thinking to yourself, I don't understand how this even became an ad. And the reality is that there's just some people behind the scenes that all thought this was a really good idea, but they didn't.

They didn't focus group it. They didn't test it. They didn't, you know, try it out. So I think to that point, like, yeah, get your own little focus group and, and put things out to them and see where things landing and then beta test it a little bit and tweak it as you go. So before you invest a ton of money into printing big, beautiful, glossy versions of this, you know, make sure that you're, you've got the details relatively figured out. Yeah. And that's any client facing stuff because we know

that we will be continuing to tweak things as we go. We invested into a printer that can print 11 by 17 here in the office. And we're doing all of our client facing documents, unless they're digital, all of them printed in the office. I'm not gonna say it's the best printing shop in the world, but it's at least good enough and no one's complained about it.

And it allows us not to have to go to a printer and say, print a hundred of these. And then we find out later there were five typos and that we can't fix them later. So if you are in the process of beta testing and tweaking as you go, I would rather invest in a semi-good printer in your office than ever going and buying bulk on these welcome books and journey maps. And that's a really, really solid tip right there as well. Making that investment.

a lot of businesses can really benefit from having these larger printers anyway for some client facing stuff. So yeah, it's a wise investment by far, for sure. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of this. It's been, honestly, this has just been such an enlightening conversation. If there's one takeaway that you want people to take away from today's conversation, what would you say that would be?

It is this exercise of creating a client journey map or just understanding client expectations. is primarily you in the end will benefit from it. It is obviously we want it for our clients, but the exercise comes back full force to you. You will be a better salesman. You will be better at communicating it to your and teaching your employees. It is a vastly improved process internally.

once we have our client facing understood. So true. Couldn't agree more. Absolutely. Well, listen, if people want to find you, where can they find you? They can find me on Instagram @SoniaBarneyDesign or on my website, SoniaBarneydesign.com. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Sonia, for joining me today. This has been lovely. Thank you, Shauna Lynn. I appreciate your time.

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