If you’re running an interior design business and past about the three-to-five years mark, you probably didn’t picture yourself working this many hours for income that still lurches between flat-out and worryingly quiet. Do you wonder how to get consistent clients as an interior designer?
This is the feast-and-famine that haunts the self-employed interior designer. The months where you’re turning away work or struggling to keep on top of things, followed by the ones where it’s a bit too quiet for comfort.
When things go quiet, the instinct tends to be the same: to do more. This means more marketing (on more platforms). Creating another lead magnet, sending out more regular newsletters, squeezing in another networking meeting, or trying the latest promising feature that the algorithm swears will make your business fly!
It might feel counter-intuitive, but it’s my firm belief that it’s “doing more” that is keeping you stuck. Consistent clients don’t come from doing more, they come from doing less, better. Here’s why, and what to do instead.
The first few years of an interior design business
When you start out, adding more is exactly the right move. You’re getting clients signed up, paying the bills, and figuring things out as you go. You haven’t yet worked out the exact type of work you love and are brilliant at, and you haven’t been at it long enough to know which systems, marketing and pricing actually work for you.
So, as you grow you try everything. You take most (all!) of the work that comes your way. You have a go at everything. This isn’t a mistake, it’s how you learn and gather hands-on experience in the early years, an openness and willingness to try just about anything!
There’s just one catch: we’re brilliant at adding things, but terrible at taking them off the plate again.
The turning point for Interior Designers
Typically somewhere around the three-to-five year mark, doing more stops working.
You’re not building anymore. You’re overloading a very full plate. At this stage, adding more in has the effect of just amplifying the noise.
It looks like additional ways (and extra time) spent marketing, more systems and tools, another service offering or two, more hustle, all piled into a schedule that was already very full.
No wonder interior designers end up worn out and overwhelmed. It’s hard to see clearly what’s working anymore, and worse, all this effort could be leading you towards burnout.
Things you might recognise in your business:
- You’re working far more hours than you ever signed up for, and the profit doesn’t reflect it.
- Some months are flat out, some are far too quiet, and you can’t quite predict which is coming.
- You’re doing a lot of marketing, but you couldn’t honestly say what’s actually bringing the work in.
- You keep adding new tactics because someone said you should, not because you’ve seen them land.
- You’re brilliant at the design, it’s the business side that makes you spiral.
None of that means you’re bad at business. It means you’re running an established business the way you ran a brand-new one. This is a very fixable problem.
Why ‘more’ feels productive, but isn’t
There’s an uncomfortable truth that we need to recognise: busy isn’t the same as successful.
I blame society, our culture. We’re taught over and over again that being busy and being productive means we are successful. We wear our busyness like a badge of honour.
When you’re maxed out, it feels like you’re doing everything you can. But the busyness, and the overwhelm it creates, is usually where the money is leaking from your business.
- Scattered marketing that never gets measured or followed up
- Prices that are a touch too low and discounts thrown in to ‘win the work’
- Scope creep that eats into your fee
- Saying ‘yes’ to work that was never quite right for you (just in case)
You can rationalise that if things aren’t working out in the business – it’s certainly not down to a lack of effort on your part. But it’s this very busy activity that hides the leaks.
Doing more doesn’t automatically fix your business and bring you the consistency you crave. It’s why adding another marketing channel, or trying the latest trend, rarely brings the extra work you’re after.
All you’re doing is pouring effort into a bucket without checking where the holes are, and plugging them first.
What interior designers need to do instead
Less, better.
Consistent clients don’t come from doing more. They come from getting honest about the few things that actually work for your business and focusing your energy there.
This starts with two things.
Clarity. Decide the exact business you’re building: the type of business, your ideal client and project, the shape of what you want to create. You can’t prioritise your energy and focus until you’ve chosen.
It’s very easy, a few years in, to find that you have drifted a long way off course, or to end up with a whole menu of services, half of which you don’t even enjoy.
If your attention is scattered, it’s really hard to bring in clients consistently. You lack focus and potential clients feel this.
Aligned Action. Once you’re clear on what you’re building, you can pay attention to what genuinely brings work and money in for you (and then drop the rest).
If you’re an established interior design business, you’ll have the experience and the data to make informed decisions on what’s working. You don’t need to add in more tactics, you need to know which of the tactics you’ve already got in place are working for you.
Make sure you understand what every activity in your business leads you towards. Does it step you towards bringing in your ideal clients, or away from it?
These are the first two of four pillars in the CALM method. Limits and mindset complete the picture, and I’ll cover those in my next post.
The thing that keeps designers stuck
The catch is twofold: 1) capturing the data of what’s working and what’s not AND 2) having the headspace to act on it.
From inside your own business, it can be genuinely hard to see what to keep doing and what to stop. There is always the fear that you’ll let go of the wrong activity and make things worse. Doing less is the opposite of what we’re told will work in our always-on, hustle culture, so it feels brave to let things go but you must.
A few honest questions to ask yourself
None of this needs to feel like a big overhaul. Shifting towards a calmer (yet still profitable) business starts with a clear-eyed look at what’s really going on.
If you want somewhere to begin, sit with these questions:
- Do you have a clear sense of the type of business you actually want to build? Not the one you drifted into but the one you’d choose on purpose.
- Could you name where your last ten enquiries came from? If not, your marketing might be spread thin across everything and measured nowhere.
- Are you doing the things that matter, or being pulled into “busy activity”? There’s a real difference between ‘busy work’ and intentional action that leads to progress.
- What’s on your plate that you’ve never actually taken off? The tactic you kept because you started it, not because it works.
- Is your social media making you measure things you don’t really care about? If Instagram has never brought you a client, does it matter whether a post gets likes?
- What would “less, but better” look like? If you were allowed to stop doing three things tomorrow, which would they be?
The short version to getting consistent clients as an interior designer
You’re not stuck because you’re not doing enough. You’re stuck because you’re doing too much, and the few things that would actually move the needle are buried under everything else.
Do less, and make sure you do it with intention. If this feels challenging for you, that’s pretty normal, the answer is to get someone to help you see what you can’t see from the inside.
It’s far easier to tackle this stuff when you’re not doing it on your own. That’s exactly the work we do inside the CALM programme. It’s a small, calm space for established interior designers who are ready to stop doing more and start building something consistent and profitable instead.
If that’s you, take a look here.
Hello, I’m Lisa Honiball, a Business Coach & Mentor. I provide calm business guidance to established Interior Designers.
A few ways you can work with me:
One pressing issue to solve? A Power Hour gives you focused 1:1 time to get you unstuck, make decisions, and leave with a clear plan.
You and a few designer pals circling the same thing? Try a Designer Clinic. You tell me the issue and I’ll build the session around it. An hour on the topic, then thirty minutes for your questions.
Want to know what’s bringing the work in and how to generate more? Sales Lab is a self-paced programme that shows you what’s really driving your enquiries, so you can do more of what works, drop what doesn’t, and build a steadier flow of client projects & income.
Craving a profitable business without the overwhelm? If you’re ready to feel as brilliant about the business side of things as you do the design, there are two options:
Small group: The CALM programme is the full CALM method across four months. We focus on both the business and the person behind the business.
One-to-one: The CALM reset is the same CALM method delivered as a private coaching experience over six months. This is the most in-depth way to work with me.
Not sure where to start? Book a free Clarity Call. Twenty minutes on where your business is now and what would help most next. I’ll tell you honestly, even if that’s nothing I sell.
