123. Nancy Ganzekaufer & Desi Share 6 Ways to Leverage Your Time to Increase Your Profit
Do you ever feel like there aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done in your interior design business? What if I told you that by making a few simple changes, you could leverage your time to increase your profitability?
In this episode, I'm joined by fellow interior design business coach Nancy Ganzekaufer for a collaborative conversation about six actionable strategies to make the most of your time. From planning your days for maximum efficiency to using AI to streamline communication and project proposals, these tips will help you work smarter, not harder.
None of these strategies will take much time to implement, but they can have a huge impact on your bottom line. If you're ready to optimize your time and boost your profits, this episode is for you.
If you're interested in working together one-on-one in the fall or winter, now is the time to put your name on the waitlist for private coaching. Click here to secure your spot!
What You’ll Discover from this Episode:
How to switch from to-do-based planning to results-based planning for greater profitability.
Why recording and summarizing client consultations using AI can save you time and improve client connections.
The importance of scheduling focus times for deep work and moving the needle on business initiatives.
How hiring a virtual assistant can help you leverage your time and increase your profits.
Why honoring your capacity and being selective about projects is key to reaching your financial and lifestyle goals.
How to leverage your sourcing and utilize reps to avoid wasting time on product research.
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103. How to Optimize Your Team’s Performance, Productivity, and Profitability
Nancy Ganzekaufer: Website | Instagram | Facebook Group
Design Your Time: Time Management for Interior Designers by Personality Type
Full Episode Transcript:
Hey, designer, you're listening to Episode 123. Today's episode is a collaborative conversation with fellow interior design business coach Nancy Ganzekaufer. We're diving into six ways to leverage your time to increase your profitability. We cover everything from the way you plan your days for efficiency and productivity to using AI to cut down on communication time and streamline your project proposals. The best thing is that none of these are going to take you a lot of time, but they're going to have a huge impact on your profitability.
I can't wait for you to listen and get started with these actionable strategies today.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you're ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you're in the right place. I'm Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let's go.
Hello, designer. Welcome back to the podcast. Today is a special day because I have a guest here. It is Nancy Ganzekaufer.
And I don't even know now you're telling me if I should introduce you in that way or not. But anyways, I'm excited to have you here. We're going to be talking about the six ways to leverage your time to increase your profit. This is going to be a fantastic episode. And what I love is that we have very similar ways of approaching these things and also very different.
So it'll be a fun conversation for people. Welcome, Nancy. I'd love for you to take a moment and introduce yourself just in case anyone's not familiar with you.
Nancy: Thank you, Desi. I'm so happy to be here. And I love our conversation because you're right, as business coaches, we both approach things hoping for the same end result, but we approach it a little differently. So I think it'll be a great conversation for everybody on how we teach people similar, but differently, and they could gain a lot of knowledge from that.
So yes, I am Nancy Quinn now. I was married about two months ago and I'm no longer in New York, I'm in Florida. So previously, Ganzekaufer, my website is still nancyganzekaufer.com for those of you looking for me, but we are shortly switching to profitinsiderscoaching.com. So that'll be coming up soon. It's not available yet. So we're going a little away from my name and going more to the program that we successfully bring designers through to enhance their profitability and their businesses.
So you know me for a while, but I've been doing the coaching for about nine, 10 years. Prior to that, I was an art framing and accessory consultant working with interior designers, with their clients, providing those ending finishing touches that everybody always needs. And I was working on Long Island. I did that for 17 years.
And as I was working with interior designers and their clients, I noticed a lot of improvements that designers could make in the way they converse with their clients and the way they try to sell to their clients, the way they present themselves, the way they run their businesses, marketing themselves, you know, they needed a lot. They had to learn a lot.
So I started having seminars for them. As an art consultant, I would bring them into my showroom, but I teach them how to do their bookkeeping and their accounting and their Instagram and their Facebook and then how to talk to their clients and make suggestions on running their businesses.
So when I turned 50, I decided, you know what, let's hang my shingle as a coach as opposed to still being an art consultant. And that's kind of when I made the switch. And it's been amazing. I wish I would have done it from in my 20s.
Desi: Yes, I always love hearing how people end up where they are today. And of course, continue to evolve. I think that's so interesting. Just about the interior design industry in general, I'm sure you notice this a lot with your clients. You'll have second career designers or they'll be in one industry and then switch to a different part of the industry.
I mean, I certainly had that evolution of starting as a commercial designer, then starting a residential business. Now I'm a coach. So I think that's so fun. That's part of your background and so valuable to the designers that you support.
Nancy: Well, I think it teaches us like we had to restart from scratch just like they did. Right. So we learned how to market ourselves in a new industry and just like they need to learn how to market themselves in their local industry, their local area. We know how to do that because we've been doing it and recreating ourselves. So it's really a great skill.
I love that. I also ran the Interior Design Society in the local chapter, the IDS Long Island chapter, and then created the virtual chapter. So that leadership skills that you gain from being part of industry organizations is also something I like to teach designers, like be part of organizations. Learn some skills that can enhance your personality, your ability to handle conflict with your clients. It's all skills that cross over. So those years that I grew this business were so invaluable to me.
And I just want to pass on everything that I learned all the time.
Desi: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And then we'll get to our topic, friends, of leveraging outside opportunities, even if they're not paid opportunities, like volunteer positions to gain new skill sets, and practice some of those skills that you really need as a designer CEO. I know that was something I did as well. I was on the board of ASID. That's the one that's big here.
And then I was also really involved in the junior league that was active here and got so much experience, like even writing press releases. So it's a great way to dip your toes into something no one would actually hire you probably to do because you don't have the skill set and learn on the go. Which I guess is a way to really leverage your time to increase your profit is to find other ways to learn and grow. And that is what we're going to talk about today. We're going to be doing a little bit of a round robin style of different approaches to using your time better.
Because when we use our time better, not only do we feel a whole lot more calm and in control or more profitable? And isn't that the ultimate goal? Right?
Nancy: Yes. And I think people have trouble understanding that relationship. It really is nuanced. And once you get there, you're like, "Oh my God, it actually works."
Desi: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. So I'm going to kick us off with my first strategy for leveraging that time. And that is going to be from switching from to-do-based planning to results-based planning. And when I talk about results-based planning, I'm talking about planning your week out so that you know what outcome you're creating through the things that you decide to commit to and the things that you put on your calendar.
And this goes not just for you, it's for your team and for your contractors. And of course, we can look at this from a daily basis, weekly, monthly, quarterly, throughout the year. But we always want to have our sights set on what's the ultimate goal that we're creating. Because then that acts as a filter for how we spend our time and make decisions in the business. And one of the ways that I like to do this just to kick it off is to do a time study.
If you go back to episode 103, there's one called Optimize Your Team's Productivity. And you can use that same process for whether it's your team or yourself, but really having an understanding of how you're spending your time on a daily basis. So that way you can look at are these activities in alignment with a future goal? What do you think about that one?
Nancy: I love that one. And I wanted you to give like a specific example. So like if this week, my goal that I want me and my staff to go through, and by the end of the week, give me an example of like what an interior designer would set as a goal for the week. I like to get specific.
I like to teach everyone like, you probably have the example in your head and what Desi is going to say, you're going to go, oh, this has happened to me. And then we actually teach them how to logic through that.
Desi: Yeah. So I mean, the ultimate result is part of what we're talking about today is more profitability. You could do this from the standpoint of your client projects. I want to get to a certain phase or milestone in the project. By the end of this time period, that's the result because then I'm going to bill for that section of the fee.
So that could be the result you're working toward. It could also be something more on the back end of the business where you are... For one of my clients, she was getting a lot of inquiries for projects that weren't necessarily a good fit and knew that she was also getting these inquiries for projects that were a really good fit. And so part of what she needed to do was save herself time filtering through these, which is going to increase the profitability, again, that end result, And then also be giving a marketing piece that's speaking directly to those people she wants to work. So that way, by the time she got them on the phone, it was already a yes.
So the result there was this completed welcome sequence that she wanted to create. So that's the end result, which of course, contributes to an even greater result. But then each day or each week, you can start to break that down into those mini results that you're going to chip away at that are going to help get you to that end point.
Nancy: So perfectly said. Similar to the way I just worded a little differently, what results are we looking to get? And let's back up into the steps that are needed to get there and get it scheduled on your calendar or in your time management system, however you're working. Right. So I agree 100% with Desi.
My first tip is to save you time when you're working with clients. One of the things we teach our profit insiders now is to record your consultations with your client. Summarize through AI, feed that AI into a summary system that then can produce all the details you need so you don't have to worry so much about your memory, writing things down, and you're able to like connect with the client when you're in person with them. It is a huge time-saver, Desi. I can't even tell you. And it really relaxes the interior designer when they're at their session because they don't worry so much.
Oh my God, I have to remember. I made that suggestion or the client says they didn't like this color or that particular suggestion that I made. They're able to just, and as a body language trainer, I'm also a body language trainer. I like to make sure that my clients are taught how to present themselves in person to the client so that they feel trusted. So this recording and using AI to summarize your sessions and then using that summary to actually help you create your pricing model and your proposal has been a huge time saver for my profit insiders and all the designers that I teach.
What do you think of that suggestion?
Desi: Oh, I love this. Love it. Love it. Love it. And I'm even thinking about, yes, the consultation for sure.
But even for future meetings...
Nancy: Oh, all meetings.
Desi: Yeah. What I'm picturing is this is going to become part of how you start to assign tasks to yourself and to your team too. You could take that summary and have your assistant start to get those points off of it and put it in Asana or ClickUp or whatever project management software, even saving you a whole lot of time from trying to figure out what am I supposed to do after this meeting or even the amount of time. One of the things I always suggest for clients is build in time after whatever meeting you have to capture the key takeaways and get your action steps either sent off to people or assigned to people. And so this could just help really streamline that approach too.
Nancy: We actually demonstrate it live in our group sessions and their mouths drop open because it literally takes three minutes. And you have summarized three minutes. It's that easy if you're doing it the way we're teaching with the right tools. And think about your charging. We teach you to charge a design fee, a flat design fee, variable project management fee.
Now part of that first stage is hoping to get the client to the design phase. What better way to show your efficiency, your thoroughness, your attention to detail, then making sure that you're using technology to help you do that.
Desi: Absolutely. Now, one of the things I'm thinking about is a listener tuning in here and going, okay, that sounds really cool. What are the nuts and bolts of this? How would I do that? Especially I could see people thinking about how do I do this when I'm live in person and I'm not using a computer.
Desi: So you're recording on your phone or your iPad and you're letting the client know, "I'm just recording for my own purposes so I can help summarize this. Is that okay with you?" So we always let them know to inform your client that you are recording. And as a side note, I thought later, like if you're recording every single meeting and change orders and phone calls, you definitely don't wanna record everything and you definitely wanna tell the client. But you can do this. There's apps, you can do it on your phone. You have to remember to hit record, and to stop recording, things like that.
There's also other devices that we're starting to discover that people can use that we're teaching. But the AI at this point can record and summarize. And then you can take the summary and you can say, this is a great summary, but I'd like it in this format. You can change the way you use it. You can use it in chart format.
You can put it in list format. You can say, I always call out things the client says that are a compliment to the designer. So I always say, ask it after it summarizes, did the client say anything great about the consultation? And usually the client will say something like, "This has been amazing. You answered all my questions."
Now you have a built-in testimonial. So this, I mean, again, I could go on, I can do an hour on just this, which we do in our training programs, but it's a huge time saver and makes the interior designer more profitable because they can do it in a better timeframe.
Desi: Oh, for sure. For sure. And I'm even thinking, does some of your designers use this as a way to cut short their own writing process? So I'm thinking a lot of my clients will send out a Friday email update to their client. I'm thinking like if you didn't particularly like typing, you could start to speak out your updates or even have it write something like that for you that way, couldn't you?
Nancy: Oh, yeah. That's even more basic. We've been teaching that for a long time. But yes, that is... I met someone the other day and this is not a designer, not my client, it's a completely different industry.
And she's like, I literally... In her email app, which I didn't ask her which email app she has, she literally has a button that it can say, respond to this email. She's like, she just presses the button and it responds to the email. She reads it of course, and make sure it's an appropriate response and hits send. She's not even writing.
It's almost ridiculous at this point, but when it comes to designers and profitability and making more money in their businesses, this is a tool that they can use that it can be used across so many different parts of their business. But here today, I wanted specifically to highlight recording your consultations, using it to summarize back to the client for your own system. Like you're saying, making a list, using it to do your pricing. We have the key, the pricing tool that we came out with, and now we're creating an enhancement. I have a GPT key addition to it that's coming out soon.
So literally, everything they record can just be plopped in and it can do a lot of the preliminary pricing for everybody. And they can go from there. So time savings and more profitability.
Desi: Yeah. Oh, love it. All right. That kind of brings me to my next tip, which is developing self-accountability and creating focus times for yourself. And the way that I see this very much relating to what you were just talking about, Nancy, is if we can clear up some of those communication times that really tend to backlog you in your week, you could start to open up big blocks of time, which I call focus periods, to do deep work, whether that is make really great progress on your projects and do it very efficiently.
And especially what you teach your clients with a flat fee, that efficiency in how you operate and design throughout the week is so, so important. And then you also start to develop these periods of time where you can really lean into the activities that are going to move the business along. Whether it is creating new processes to further streamline things, increase your profitability, whether it is diving into various marketing channels where you can start to attract those bigger, better projects.
But having those scheduled periods of dedicated time where you're not going to be interrupted, that you can minimize the amount of context switching you're doing and go all in on whatever it is that you need to do that week is so, so key to ending the week with a lot accomplished. And of course, that brings in more money to the business.
Nancy: Definitely. This is really an important one that you're talking about. And it's so hard for designers. A lot of them self-identify or are truly ADHD, they have trouble focusing for long periods of time. So the focus sessions that you're talking about, which are absolutely key for them to be able to focus, like you say, put together a design plan for somebody or put together a proposal, something they need to concentrate, turn their phones off, turn off their notifications, and just deep dive.
But often it's the thing that gets ignored the most. So I love the fact that you brought it up. I usually recommend a Monday or a Friday to block off your whole day. Do not take client appointments. And if your client says it's the only day, say, I'm sorry, I'm already booked.
Protect that time so you can have your focus sessions and deep dive into your bookkeeping or your design plans or just growing your business? How do you have time to think and strategize about the next level or what you want to offer? You need these focus sessions.
Desi: Absolutely. And that's why I was excited to talk to you a little bit about the AI. And I know you've got your pricing tool, the key. And just what are the things that you can take and make more automatic in your business so that way you don't have all of those chunks of time being dedicated to the manual pieces of summarizing and entering things in spreadsheets that you're reinventing the wheel every single time you have to write a proposal because it's like that is what is going to help you create the time to have these focus periods. Because I know it is difficult when you're not in the habit or routine of setting up your week that way.
Nancy: Yeah. And that actually takes me to my second tip, which is partly related to again, utilizing AI. But in this tip, I say utilize virtual assistants, hire a VA. A lot of designers are afraid to have, they work from their home, they're afraid to have someone in their home. And if you want to combine it, hire a VA that's learning AI and actually really knows AI and you can combine and learn with them.
They can actually teach you something, right? So in one of my groups, I have a Profit Insiders Elite Group and we had a presentation on human resources and they were saying how you want to create a team based on your future self, right? Your future business, right? Think through the culture of your company, not just filling a gap at the moment that you have, but at the same time, sometimes when we're drinking from a fire hose and we can't get out of our own way, and yes, we wanna stop and think about the future culture of our company and how we want our org chart to look. But sometimes just hiring a virtual assistant right there in the moment to help with something that's really been on your mind and struggling in your head to get out of the way to get other things done, hire the VA.
That's a money-saving tip because if you were doing it yourself hourly, you are probably worth more hourly than a virtual assistant. Plus, if it's something that could make you more money, make you more profitable, streamline your services, perfect your process so that a client recommends you to someone else. Hiring a virtual assistant is actually going to leverage your time and increase your profit if you do it properly. Especially if you have them working on client files, client work, where it's billable to the client or against the client funds, that allows you then to work that same hour simultaneously, and you're actually two hours against the client's account. Does that make sense the way I'm saying it?
Desi: Oh, absolutely. And I 100% agree with that approach. And I think it's also I'll just loop back to that idea of doing a time study and having a good understanding of what are those things that you're spending time on daily. Because once you have that, it's such an easy way to go through. This is what I spent my time on in the week and look at, okay, so what actually doesn't need to be done by me and what could be done by somebody else?
And there's the other guardrail there of understanding what you can delete, not just for yourself. But if you're seeing that you're doing things that are not contributing to the results you want to create, you want to catch that before you delegate. Because otherwise, you end up paying someone to do something that isn't revenue generating or connected to a revenue generating activity. And so, you know, doing that as the precursor to bringing on that virtual assistant.
Nancy: Yes, I agree. Absolutely. And we have a similar exercise that it's amazing how you start to see how you use your time is not necessarily related to your priorities in the moment of your life you're in. Once you start analyzing it with your exercise or my exercise, I remember I had a client, it was actually not an interior designer, it was a closet company and there was one week, this is when I was first coaching and she called me and she's like, I just have way too much on my calendar, way, way too much. I'm like, okay, let's open it up and see what we can delegate, give to someone else, or turn around and say no and not do this thing.
And when you have another set of eyes looking at it, it's amazing. I'm like, okay, why are we doing that? Well, I feel obligated because, okay, obligation is not a reason to say yes, right? Is it gonna benefit you and your goals for this year, for this quarter, for your business, for your life? And well, not really.
And okay, so let's just figure out how we're gonna say no and let's say no, right? And you have actually taught me a ton when it comes to saying no and saying yes to things because this is one of the trainings you and I did a long time ago and we talked about and this is something that you're really good at, I feel like.
Desi: Oh, well, thank you. I do think it's been something that I've worked on, but it's so essential, right? One of the questions I always like to ask myself whenever I'm presented with an opportunity or a request of my time or an idea that I even have myself and I start to look at what are my reasons for doing this or saying yes or saying no. And do I like my reasons? Because when you give that example of the client, well, I feel obligated. That's never where I want to say yes from. And as soon as I see that's where the yes is coming from, it is a major sign to me to just slow down and make an intentional choice.
And that really brings me to my last point that I want to make here is around honoring your capacity and being very clear on what you say yes and no to. And it circles back to that results-based planning or the result that you're creating in the business is that you want to be profitable. You want to be more profitable, likely, than in the past year.
And so you have to know what type of projects you bring into your business are going to be the most profitable. And that's going to help you understand what you say yes and no to, along with being clear on the result you want to create for your lifestyle as well. Because we want to balance those things out and look at them in tandem while also remembering it's a business. You have financial goals that you want to bring in.
And so when you're looking at that end result of what's the profitability that I wanna hit, then you can start doing some math around how many projects can I take on? If I take on this many projects at this cadence, what does that mean in terms of the types of marketing I need to be doing? The types of clients I need to speak directly to or get in front of? And when they get in front of me and come into my inbox with an inquiry, who do I need to say no to?
This is a really important thing. I think often designers... And I remember doing this too when I was practicing. It's easy to get excited of like, “Ooh, a project. Somebody wants to work with me." Even when you've been in the business for a long time, and of course, people want to work with you, there is that little hit of, "...Oh, goodie. Let's do this.”
Nancy: Yeah, somebody wants me. Somebody wants my taste and my... Yeah, it feels good when somebody wants you, but I will agree with you completely that sometimes you have to say no. And we have an exercise, it's a profitability analyzer. It's really simple.
When your job is done and it's all over and the client's finished, you put all your numbers in and it's not that many numbers and you see was I profitable and how much did I actually make the hourly rate that I have in my head that I think I should be making and what we often find is the larger jobs they make less as a percentage because they're scared of it so they pull back hours that's a big number they pull back right. So also for the designer to understand where is their sweet spot, which types of jobs do make them the most money, and which ones do, like you said, they enjoy the most? What should they be saying yes to? What should they be saying no to? It's a journey. And it's something that you make a lot of mistakes along the way before you get it right.
Desi: Oh, yeah. And I think it just continues to evolve as you progressively uplevel who you're working with and how you're working and the team structure. And so it's something you always have to have your eye on, I think.
Nancy: Yes, it's ongoing. I actually left a message for one of my clients this morning. We have a business helpline. And I said, your business is growing and breathing entity. It's not a destination because she was upset like over the years she has spent money on things that are now outdated and she's being told they're outdated and it's so frustrating when you pay a lot of money, let's say for a new website and now you're being told it's outdated when you just did the latest and greatest thing only, I don't know, two or three years ago.
Well, that's how fast technology is moving. So being profitable, leveraging your time and being profitable on a consistent basis is important for you to continue to feed this growing living thing called your business. It needs money to grow and often keep up with societal changes and technology. So yeah, the tips we're giving today, I think are really important for people to put the money aside for some of the bigger things they need to do as well.
Desi: Yeah, absolutely. I don't know why, but this is a random thing. But I'm like thinking of skinny jeans, right? It's like, the old website is a pair of skinny jeans. You don't get mad at yourself for buying the skinny jeans and wearing the skinny jeans, even though now the wide legs there.
But it's interesting that you bring that up of how we sort of blame ourselves for past choices that we made with a past brain and past market circumstances and past technology. So I just think that's fascinating that you brought that up. And I really encourage people who are listening to take a pause and think about where am I dragging along some blame or judgment that just doesn't need to be there.
Nancy: Right. Because we make the best decisions we know how to make with the information we have at the time, with the amount of time we have in our brain space to make the decision while we're juggling everything else. So it's, you did what you had to do for your business at that time. And now it's a new decision and let's make it. And you're always going to have new decisions.
It's not, it never ends, Desi, you know that and we know that. I just think it's worth saying that you're never going to arrive and be like, my website is perfect. My social media is perfect. My SOPs, my standard operating procedures are perfect. My pricing is perfect.
My service models are perfect. And I'm just really good at marketing. I've never heard anyone say that because you never feel all those things at once, because it's living and breathing and changing daily.
Desi: Yeah. And isn't it interesting, though, how often we want to cling to the possibility that could be true.
Nancy: I know. Well, I do end up telling my clients at some points, like one client was so funny. She's like, “Okay, I've worked with other coaches before. And I, I don't feel as overwhelmed as I feel like I should feel working with you.” And I said, "Well, what was the goal to make you more money and have a more balanced life?" And she's like, yeah.
I said, "How's your numbers? And how's your life?” And she's like, “I need more to do and I'm making more than ever.” I said, “Okay, so now you have to decide, are we using that time to spend more time with our husband who's retired and with our kids who want to spend more time with us? Are we going for a next level in our business?”
Are we creating a hobby that we've always wanted? Imagine having choices.
Desi: Yeah, I know. And that's what profitability gives you. When you use your time in a way that is leveraged and we're talking about today, profitability gives you choice. And I think there is no greater place to be as an empowered CEO.
Nancy: Definitely. Which... Okay. So it brings me to my last tip because I know we want to wrap up. We don't want to keep everybody too long.
We know you're all busy and you need to leverage your time to increase your profit. So my last tip is really leveraging your sourcing. There are so many different ways as interior designers, you can source. You can go directly to manufacturers, you can go to buying groups, you can go to some one of these couple of these service companies that now do your whole back end for you. They order track, deliver placement and give you your commission. All of that can be leveraged depending on what you want your life, your business, how many hours you want to work, how big your staff should be.
These are all decisions you have to make that can create additional profitability for you if you make this decision properly, right? So some older designers don't want to do, or some newer designers don't know how to don't want to do the ordering tracking delivery placement of the product they've sold. They want to just do the design work. Well, you know what? You can have a profitable business and do just that by leveraging your sourcing properly, or you can increase your profitability and use more of your own time or your staffing time to go directly to manufacturers and do order, ordering, tracking, delivery yourself.
So that's one choice, but you also can use your reps to help you with the sourcing. And as a previous art consultant, I used to love when I worked with a designer multiple times. I'd get to know their style, what they like, what they don't like. And then at some point, they would just send me fabric, send me some images, and go, can you find artwork for this? You know what I like, right?
So they were using their rep and I wasn't charging for that time. But if it took me two hours to give them a selection, they could charge for those two hours. Their client does not have to know they delegated that to me and that they didn't have to pay for it. So these ways of using your reps, your sourcing properly, can really change the profitability of your company and reduce the amount of time that you're doing things you don't have to do. So that's another thing we like to share and teach people.
Desi: I love that. And I remember doing that quite a bit myself back in the day. And I think that in general, the reps are really excited to help you out.
Nancy: They are usually and if they're not...
Desi: Go find somebody else.
Nancy: That's where I say leveraging your sourcing. Also, it matters like, you know what, there's 50 companies who you could buy sofas from, and I'm under, you know, this thousands, actually, what are your top three for doing and keep a spreadsheet. So you go right to it. You don't have to think every time I'm looking for a new company for a new style for new. For the most part, most of your jobs probably fall into a certain category.
You can get your trusted suppliers with the reps that actually help you with your time.
Desi: Yeah. And then you start to increase your volume and then potentially negotiate better pricing, which will increase your profitability. It just makes a lot of sense. And I think one of the things that's interesting about that tip is thinking about, do you have any internal resistance to doing this? I'm thinking of this specifically for the listener is when Nancy says, leverage your sourcing, ask other people to do these things.
Do you have an internal, that's not okay. That's like skirting the system. I should do it myself. I don't want to be a burden or ask for help. Just notice what's coming up for you with that tip.
Nancy: And I will tell you, I'll add to what you your list, which was really well said, they also think, but I'm the designer, shouldn't I be doing it? And it's my work, but they don't realize, nobody knows you're using your assistant in the background or a rep to give you a tip, or if it took you an hour to find a sofa of a certain size, shape, whatever, and you didn't get there, are you going to spend another hour going down a rabbit hole? Are you going to go down to your rep and going, I'm looking for a 72 inch sofa with this, that, the other thing, whatever it is, you give them the parameters that will match your design and let them come back with five options. It's a beautiful thing. You're still making the final decision but you have somebody helping you look.
And most of the time, more sets of eyes when it comes to things like that is very helpful.
Desi: Yeah. And I'm even thinking going down the rabbit hole, that comment. Typically, what I see with clients or designers that I speak with when you go down the rabbit hole is when you tend to shave off hours if you're charging hourly. And of course, if you're a flat fee, then that really tanks the profitability as well. So it's like you can kind of just sidestep around your own internal negotiation about what you should charge for, and just ask the rep for help.
And everyone's going to be better off for it.
Nancy: Yes. Agreed.
Desi: Love it. These were so great. This was really fun going back and forth too. And I feel like I need to give a recap.
Nancy: Yes.
Desi: We had a winding conversation. So just to bring it on home for everyone listening, what we talked about first is having results-based planning versus to-do-based planning.
Nancy: Number 2, you want me to say it?
Desi: Oh, sure. Yeah, let's do it that way.
Nancy: Okay. Number 2 was my first tip was recording and summarizing your consults using AI.
Desi: Then I talked about using focus times and self accountability to move the needle on projects and back end business initiatives.
Nancy: And then I talked about utilizing VA, a virtual assistant to help with some projects that can move the needle in your company and make you more money and make you more profitable by not having to do everything yourself.
Desi: Next, I brought up the key piece of honoring your capacity and being very clear on what you're saying yes and no to in order to move towards your financial and lifestyle goals.
Nancy: And finally, we talked about leveraging your sourcing by using your reps and understanding where you get things from to make it quick for you so you don't get stuck going down the rabbit hole of sourcing. So all together, I'd say this was six ways to leverage their time and increase their profitability. These were some really solid tips I think we gave today.
Desi: Yeah. And as I'm thinking about the ones that we covered, they also aren't going to be ones that take listeners a lot of time to implement.
Nancy: That's right. Not a lot of time at all.
Desi: No. There might be a little bit of setup with some of them depending on which one we're talking about. But this really doesn't have to be, now I'm going to take this episode and make a long list of all these to-dos that I have to do. And hopefully, I'll get to it at some point and then be more profitable. These are all things that you could...
I mean, you could just pick one thing that we shared today and get going with it immediately. So I love it.
Nancy: Definitely.
Desi: Yeah. Oh, this was so great, Nancy. I loved having you on here and sharing your perspective. If listeners want to go check you out a little bit more, get a hold of any of those tools that you mentioned, can you give us a recap on where to find you?
Nancy: So right now, as of February 2025, you can find me at nancyganzekaufer.com. I did get married. I am now Nancy Quinn, but our website is still the same. And in the future, it's going to be profitinsiderscoaching.com. But you know what, Desi, everyone can go into my Facebook group, which is almost 10,000 designers at this point, the Interior Design Business Forum.
Ask to get in there. And everything I offer and all my links are in there as well. So that's a great place for people to go and actually get support from each other as well. It's a really active group.
Desi: I have noticed that. It does seem like a really active group because I'm in this. I don't like comment on things, but I occasionally get tagged or whatnot. And yeah, it's a really active group. So that's a great resource and totally free for people.
So definitely check that out. And of course, we'll have all the links in the show notes for people.
Nancy: Oh, Desi, can I mention one other thing?
Desi: Yeah.
Nancy: We just came out this week with a free resource called Design Your Time. And it's basically it has you take your Myers-Briggs personality type, get your code, what your personality type is, you actually get a report from it. And then you go do our training, which is basically time management tips based on your Myers-Briggs personality type. So it's kind of cool. And it's a free opt-in to help people really hone in on which time management tips would possibly help them based on their personality.
Desi: Oh, that's a really interesting perspective.
Nancy: Yeah, go take it.
Desi: Yeah, I might have to.
Nancy: It's fun.
Desi: Yeah, I'm curious what I would be. All right. Cool.
Nancy: Yeah, Yeah. So that's free. That's on the top of the website or in the group and it's on Instagram. And I'm still... I think it's still @nancyganzekaufer on Instagram.
So yeah, find me by my name for now. And then eventually it'll be the Profit Insider's Coaching.
Desi: Okay. And I just... I have to say I'm going to probably have a really hard time mentally making that switch in my head to Quinn. I know. So if I ever refer to you,
Nancy: It's much easier.
esi: So I'll catch myself. I know, but I just figured out how to pronounce your name. I know. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.
Okay, everyone. Thank you for tuning in and thank you again, Nancy, for joining us. And of course, I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Until then, I'm wishing you a beautiful week.
Thanks for joining me for this week’s episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit www.desicreswell.com. And if you’re ready to take what you’ve learned on the podcast to the next level, I would love for you to check out my signature group coaching program, Out of Overwhelm.
I can't wait for you to listen and get started with these actionable strategies today.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you're ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you're in the right place. I'm Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let's go.
Hello, designer. Welcome back to the podcast. Today is a special day because I have a guest here. It is Nancy Ganzekaufer.
And I don't even know now you're telling me if I should introduce you in that way or not. But anyways, I'm excited to have you here. We're going to be talking about the six ways to leverage your time to increase your profit. This is going to be a fantastic episode. And what I love is that we have very similar ways of approaching these things and also very different.
So it'll be a fun conversation for people. Welcome, Nancy. I'd love for you to take a moment and introduce yourself just in case anyone's not familiar with you.
Nancy: Thank you, Desi. I'm so happy to be here. And I love our conversation because you're right, as business coaches, we both approach things hoping for the same end result, but we approach it a little differently. So I think it'll be a great conversation for everybody on how we teach people similar, but differently, and they could gain a lot of knowledge from that.
So yes, I am Nancy Quinn now. I was married about two months ago and I'm no longer in New York, I'm in Florida. So previously, Ganzekaufer, my website is still nancyganzekaufer.com for those of you looking for me, but we are shortly switching to profitinsiderscoaching.com. So that'll be coming up soon. It's not available yet. So we're going a little away from my name and going more to the program that we successfully bring designers through to enhance their profitability and their businesses.
So you know me for a while, but I've been doing the coaching for about nine, 10 years. Prior to that, I was an art framing and accessory consultant working with interior designers, with their clients, providing those ending finishing touches that everybody always needs. And I was working on Long Island. I did that for 17 years.
And as I was working with interior designers and their clients, I noticed a lot of improvements that designers could make in the way they converse with their clients and the way they try to sell to their clients, the way they present themselves, the way they run their businesses, marketing themselves, you know, they needed a lot. They had to learn a lot.
So I started having seminars for them. As an art consultant, I would bring them into my showroom, but I teach them how to do their bookkeeping and their accounting and their Instagram and their Facebook and then how to talk to their clients and make suggestions on running their businesses.
So when I turned 50, I decided, you know what, let's hang my shingle as a coach as opposed to still being an art consultant. And that's kind of when I made the switch. And it's been amazing. I wish I would have done it from in my 20s.
Desi: Yes, I always love hearing how people end up where they are today. And of course, continue to evolve. I think that's so interesting. Just about the interior design industry in general, I'm sure you notice this a lot with your clients. You'll have second career designers or they'll be in one industry and then switch to a different part of the industry.
I mean, I certainly had that evolution of starting as a commercial designer, then starting a residential business. Now I'm a coach. So I think that's so fun. That's part of your background and so valuable to the designers that you support.
Nancy: Well, I think it teaches us like we had to restart from scratch just like they did. Right. So we learned how to market ourselves in a new industry and just like they need to learn how to market themselves in their local industry, their local area. We know how to do that because we've been doing it and recreating ourselves. So it's really a great skill.
I love that. I also ran the Interior Design Society in the local chapter, the IDS Long Island chapter, and then created the virtual chapter. So that leadership skills that you gain from being part of industry organizations is also something I like to teach designers, like be part of organizations. Learn some skills that can enhance your personality, your ability to handle conflict with your clients. It's all skills that cross over. So those years that I grew this business were so invaluable to me.
And I just want to pass on everything that I learned all the time.
Desi: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And then we'll get to our topic, friends, of leveraging outside opportunities, even if they're not paid opportunities, like volunteer positions to gain new skill sets, and practice some of those skills that you really need as a designer CEO. I know that was something I did as well. I was on the board of ASID. That's the one that's big here.
And then I was also really involved in the junior league that was active here and got so much experience, like even writing press releases. So it's a great way to dip your toes into something no one would actually hire you probably to do because you don't have the skill set and learn on the go. Which I guess is a way to really leverage your time to increase your profit is to find other ways to learn and grow. And that is what we're going to talk about today. We're going to be doing a little bit of a round robin style of different approaches to using your time better.
Because when we use our time better, not only do we feel a whole lot more calm and in control or more profitable? And isn't that the ultimate goal? Right?
Nancy: Yes. And I think people have trouble understanding that relationship. It really is nuanced. And once you get there, you're like, "Oh my God, it actually works."
Desi: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. So I'm going to kick us off with my first strategy for leveraging that time. And that is going to be from switching from to-do-based planning to results-based planning. And when I talk about results-based planning, I'm talking about planning your week out so that you know what outcome you're creating through the things that you decide to commit to and the things that you put on your calendar.
And this goes not just for you, it's for your team and for your contractors. And of course, we can look at this from a daily basis, weekly, monthly, quarterly, throughout the year. But we always want to have our sights set on what's the ultimate goal that we're creating. Because then that acts as a filter for how we spend our time and make decisions in the business. And one of the ways that I like to do this just to kick it off is to do a time study.
If you go back to episode 103, there's one called Optimize Your Team's Productivity. And you can use that same process for whether it's your team or yourself, but really having an understanding of how you're spending your time on a daily basis. So that way you can look at are these activities in alignment with a future goal? What do you think about that one?
Nancy: I love that one. And I wanted you to give like a specific example. So like if this week, my goal that I want me and my staff to go through, and by the end of the week, give me an example of like what an interior designer would set as a goal for the week. I like to get specific.
I like to teach everyone like, you probably have the example in your head and what Desi is going to say, you're going to go, oh, this has happened to me. And then we actually teach them how to logic through that.
Desi: Yeah. So I mean, the ultimate result is part of what we're talking about today is more profitability. You could do this from the standpoint of your client projects. I want to get to a certain phase or milestone in the project. By the end of this time period, that's the result because then I'm going to bill for that section of the fee.
So that could be the result you're working toward. It could also be something more on the back end of the business where you are... For one of my clients, she was getting a lot of inquiries for projects that weren't necessarily a good fit and knew that she was also getting these inquiries for projects that were a really good fit. And so part of what she needed to do was save herself time filtering through these, which is going to increase the profitability, again, that end result, And then also be giving a marketing piece that's speaking directly to those people she wants to work. So that way, by the time she got them on the phone, it was already a yes.
So the result there was this completed welcome sequence that she wanted to create. So that's the end result, which of course, contributes to an even greater result. But then each day or each week, you can start to break that down into those mini results that you're going to chip away at that are going to help get you to that end point.
Nancy: So perfectly said. Similar to the way I just worded a little differently, what results are we looking to get? And let's back up into the steps that are needed to get there and get it scheduled on your calendar or in your time management system, however you're working. Right. So I agree 100% with Desi.
My first tip is to save you time when you're working with clients. One of the things we teach our profit insiders now is to record your consultations with your client. Summarize through AI, feed that AI into a summary system that then can produce all the details you need so you don't have to worry so much about your memory, writing things down, and you're able to like connect with the client when you're in person with them. It is a huge time-saver, Desi. I can't even tell you. And it really relaxes the interior designer when they're at their session because they don't worry so much.
Oh my God, I have to remember. I made that suggestion or the client says they didn't like this color or that particular suggestion that I made. They're able to just, and as a body language trainer, I'm also a body language trainer. I like to make sure that my clients are taught how to present themselves in person to the client so that they feel trusted. So this recording and using AI to summarize your sessions and then using that summary to actually help you create your pricing model and your proposal has been a huge time saver for my profit insiders and all the designers that I teach.
What do you think of that suggestion?
Desi: Oh, I love this. Love it. Love it. Love it. And I'm even thinking about, yes, the consultation for sure.
But even for future meetings...
Nancy: Oh, all meetings.
Desi: Yeah. What I'm picturing is this is going to become part of how you start to assign tasks to yourself and to your team too. You could take that summary and have your assistant start to get those points off of it and put it in Asana or ClickUp or whatever project management software, even saving you a whole lot of time from trying to figure out what am I supposed to do after this meeting or even the amount of time. One of the things I always suggest for clients is build in time after whatever meeting you have to capture the key takeaways and get your action steps either sent off to people or assigned to people. And so this could just help really streamline that approach too.
Nancy: We actually demonstrate it live in our group sessions and their mouths drop open because it literally takes three minutes. And you have summarized three minutes. It's that easy if you're doing it the way we're teaching with the right tools. And think about your charging. We teach you to charge a design fee, a flat design fee, variable project management fee.
Now part of that first stage is hoping to get the client to the design phase. What better way to show your efficiency, your thoroughness, your attention to detail, then making sure that you're using technology to help you do that.
Desi: Absolutely. Now, one of the things I'm thinking about is a listener tuning in here and going, okay, that sounds really cool. What are the nuts and bolts of this? How would I do that? Especially I could see people thinking about how do I do this when I'm live in person and I'm not using a computer.
Desi: So you're recording on your phone or your iPad and you're letting the client know, "I'm just recording for my own purposes so I can help summarize this. Is that okay with you?" So we always let them know to inform your client that you are recording. And as a side note, I thought later, like if you're recording every single meeting and change orders and phone calls, you definitely don't wanna record everything and you definitely wanna tell the client. But you can do this. There's apps, you can do it on your phone. You have to remember to hit record, and to stop recording, things like that.
There's also other devices that we're starting to discover that people can use that we're teaching. But the AI at this point can record and summarize. And then you can take the summary and you can say, this is a great summary, but I'd like it in this format. You can change the way you use it. You can use it in chart format.
You can put it in list format. You can say, I always call out things the client says that are a compliment to the designer. So I always say, ask it after it summarizes, did the client say anything great about the consultation? And usually the client will say something like, "This has been amazing. You answered all my questions."
Now you have a built-in testimonial. So this, I mean, again, I could go on, I can do an hour on just this, which we do in our training programs, but it's a huge time saver and makes the interior designer more profitable because they can do it in a better timeframe.
Desi: Oh, for sure. For sure. And I'm even thinking, does some of your designers use this as a way to cut short their own writing process? So I'm thinking a lot of my clients will send out a Friday email update to their client. I'm thinking like if you didn't particularly like typing, you could start to speak out your updates or even have it write something like that for you that way, couldn't you?
Nancy: Oh, yeah. That's even more basic. We've been teaching that for a long time. But yes, that is... I met someone the other day and this is not a designer, not my client, it's a completely different industry.
And she's like, I literally... In her email app, which I didn't ask her which email app she has, she literally has a button that it can say, respond to this email. She's like, she just presses the button and it responds to the email. She reads it of course, and make sure it's an appropriate response and hits send. She's not even writing.
It's almost ridiculous at this point, but when it comes to designers and profitability and making more money in their businesses, this is a tool that they can use that it can be used across so many different parts of their business. But here today, I wanted specifically to highlight recording your consultations, using it to summarize back to the client for your own system. Like you're saying, making a list, using it to do your pricing. We have the key, the pricing tool that we came out with, and now we're creating an enhancement. I have a GPT key addition to it that's coming out soon.
So literally, everything they record can just be plopped in and it can do a lot of the preliminary pricing for everybody. And they can go from there. So time savings and more profitability.
Desi: Yeah. Oh, love it. All right. That kind of brings me to my next tip, which is developing self-accountability and creating focus times for yourself. And the way that I see this very much relating to what you were just talking about, Nancy, is if we can clear up some of those communication times that really tend to backlog you in your week, you could start to open up big blocks of time, which I call focus periods, to do deep work, whether that is make really great progress on your projects and do it very efficiently.
And especially what you teach your clients with a flat fee, that efficiency in how you operate and design throughout the week is so, so important. And then you also start to develop these periods of time where you can really lean into the activities that are going to move the business along. Whether it is creating new processes to further streamline things, increase your profitability, whether it is diving into various marketing channels where you can start to attract those bigger, better projects.
But having those scheduled periods of dedicated time where you're not going to be interrupted, that you can minimize the amount of context switching you're doing and go all in on whatever it is that you need to do that week is so, so key to ending the week with a lot accomplished. And of course, that brings in more money to the business.
Nancy: Definitely. This is really an important one that you're talking about. And it's so hard for designers. A lot of them self-identify or are truly ADHD, they have trouble focusing for long periods of time. So the focus sessions that you're talking about, which are absolutely key for them to be able to focus, like you say, put together a design plan for somebody or put together a proposal, something they need to concentrate, turn their phones off, turn off their notifications, and just deep dive.
But often it's the thing that gets ignored the most. So I love the fact that you brought it up. I usually recommend a Monday or a Friday to block off your whole day. Do not take client appointments. And if your client says it's the only day, say, I'm sorry, I'm already booked.
Protect that time so you can have your focus sessions and deep dive into your bookkeeping or your design plans or just growing your business? How do you have time to think and strategize about the next level or what you want to offer? You need these focus sessions.
Desi: Absolutely. And that's why I was excited to talk to you a little bit about the AI. And I know you've got your pricing tool, the key. And just what are the things that you can take and make more automatic in your business so that way you don't have all of those chunks of time being dedicated to the manual pieces of summarizing and entering things in spreadsheets that you're reinventing the wheel every single time you have to write a proposal because it's like that is what is going to help you create the time to have these focus periods. Because I know it is difficult when you're not in the habit or routine of setting up your week that way.
Nancy: Yeah. And that actually takes me to my second tip, which is partly related to again, utilizing AI. But in this tip, I say utilize virtual assistants, hire a VA. A lot of designers are afraid to have, they work from their home, they're afraid to have someone in their home. And if you want to combine it, hire a VA that's learning AI and actually really knows AI and you can combine and learn with them.
They can actually teach you something, right? So in one of my groups, I have a Profit Insiders Elite Group and we had a presentation on human resources and they were saying how you want to create a team based on your future self, right? Your future business, right? Think through the culture of your company, not just filling a gap at the moment that you have, but at the same time, sometimes when we're drinking from a fire hose and we can't get out of our own way, and yes, we wanna stop and think about the future culture of our company and how we want our org chart to look. But sometimes just hiring a virtual assistant right there in the moment to help with something that's really been on your mind and struggling in your head to get out of the way to get other things done, hire the VA.
That's a money-saving tip because if you were doing it yourself hourly, you are probably worth more hourly than a virtual assistant. Plus, if it's something that could make you more money, make you more profitable, streamline your services, perfect your process so that a client recommends you to someone else. Hiring a virtual assistant is actually going to leverage your time and increase your profit if you do it properly. Especially if you have them working on client files, client work, where it's billable to the client or against the client funds, that allows you then to work that same hour simultaneously, and you're actually two hours against the client's account. Does that make sense the way I'm saying it?
Desi: Oh, absolutely. And I 100% agree with that approach. And I think it's also I'll just loop back to that idea of doing a time study and having a good understanding of what are those things that you're spending time on daily. Because once you have that, it's such an easy way to go through. This is what I spent my time on in the week and look at, okay, so what actually doesn't need to be done by me and what could be done by somebody else?
And there's the other guardrail there of understanding what you can delete, not just for yourself. But if you're seeing that you're doing things that are not contributing to the results you want to create, you want to catch that before you delegate. Because otherwise, you end up paying someone to do something that isn't revenue generating or connected to a revenue generating activity. And so, you know, doing that as the precursor to bringing on that virtual assistant.
Nancy: Yes, I agree. Absolutely. And we have a similar exercise that it's amazing how you start to see how you use your time is not necessarily related to your priorities in the moment of your life you're in. Once you start analyzing it with your exercise or my exercise, I remember I had a client, it was actually not an interior designer, it was a closet company and there was one week, this is when I was first coaching and she called me and she's like, I just have way too much on my calendar, way, way too much. I'm like, okay, let's open it up and see what we can delegate, give to someone else, or turn around and say no and not do this thing.
And when you have another set of eyes looking at it, it's amazing. I'm like, okay, why are we doing that? Well, I feel obligated because, okay, obligation is not a reason to say yes, right? Is it gonna benefit you and your goals for this year, for this quarter, for your business, for your life? And well, not really.
And okay, so let's just figure out how we're gonna say no and let's say no, right? And you have actually taught me a ton when it comes to saying no and saying yes to things because this is one of the trainings you and I did a long time ago and we talked about and this is something that you're really good at, I feel like.
Desi: Oh, well, thank you. I do think it's been something that I've worked on, but it's so essential, right? One of the questions I always like to ask myself whenever I'm presented with an opportunity or a request of my time or an idea that I even have myself and I start to look at what are my reasons for doing this or saying yes or saying no. And do I like my reasons? Because when you give that example of the client, well, I feel obligated. That's never where I want to say yes from. And as soon as I see that's where the yes is coming from, it is a major sign to me to just slow down and make an intentional choice.
And that really brings me to my last point that I want to make here is around honoring your capacity and being very clear on what you say yes and no to. And it circles back to that results-based planning or the result that you're creating in the business is that you want to be profitable. You want to be more profitable, likely, than in the past year.
And so you have to know what type of projects you bring into your business are going to be the most profitable. And that's going to help you understand what you say yes and no to, along with being clear on the result you want to create for your lifestyle as well. Because we want to balance those things out and look at them in tandem while also remembering it's a business. You have financial goals that you want to bring in.
And so when you're looking at that end result of what's the profitability that I wanna hit, then you can start doing some math around how many projects can I take on? If I take on this many projects at this cadence, what does that mean in terms of the types of marketing I need to be doing? The types of clients I need to speak directly to or get in front of? And when they get in front of me and come into my inbox with an inquiry, who do I need to say no to?
This is a really important thing. I think often designers... And I remember doing this too when I was practicing. It's easy to get excited of like, “Ooh, a project. Somebody wants to work with me." Even when you've been in the business for a long time, and of course, people want to work with you, there is that little hit of, "...Oh, goodie. Let's do this.”
Nancy: Yeah, somebody wants me. Somebody wants my taste and my... Yeah, it feels good when somebody wants you, but I will agree with you completely that sometimes you have to say no. And we have an exercise, it's a profitability analyzer. It's really simple.
When your job is done and it's all over and the client's finished, you put all your numbers in and it's not that many numbers and you see was I profitable and how much did I actually make the hourly rate that I have in my head that I think I should be making and what we often find is the larger jobs they make less as a percentage because they're scared of it so they pull back hours that's a big number they pull back right. So also for the designer to understand where is their sweet spot, which types of jobs do make them the most money, and which ones do, like you said, they enjoy the most? What should they be saying yes to? What should they be saying no to? It's a journey. And it's something that you make a lot of mistakes along the way before you get it right.
Desi: Oh, yeah. And I think it just continues to evolve as you progressively uplevel who you're working with and how you're working and the team structure. And so it's something you always have to have your eye on, I think.
Nancy: Yes, it's ongoing. I actually left a message for one of my clients this morning. We have a business helpline. And I said, your business is growing and breathing entity. It's not a destination because she was upset like over the years she has spent money on things that are now outdated and she's being told they're outdated and it's so frustrating when you pay a lot of money, let's say for a new website and now you're being told it's outdated when you just did the latest and greatest thing only, I don't know, two or three years ago.
Well, that's how fast technology is moving. So being profitable, leveraging your time and being profitable on a consistent basis is important for you to continue to feed this growing living thing called your business. It needs money to grow and often keep up with societal changes and technology. So yeah, the tips we're giving today, I think are really important for people to put the money aside for some of the bigger things they need to do as well.
Desi: Yeah, absolutely. I don't know why, but this is a random thing. But I'm like thinking of skinny jeans, right? It's like, the old website is a pair of skinny jeans. You don't get mad at yourself for buying the skinny jeans and wearing the skinny jeans, even though now the wide legs there.
But it's interesting that you bring that up of how we sort of blame ourselves for past choices that we made with a past brain and past market circumstances and past technology. So I just think that's fascinating that you brought that up. And I really encourage people who are listening to take a pause and think about where am I dragging along some blame or judgment that just doesn't need to be there.
Nancy: Right. Because we make the best decisions we know how to make with the information we have at the time, with the amount of time we have in our brain space to make the decision while we're juggling everything else. So it's, you did what you had to do for your business at that time. And now it's a new decision and let's make it. And you're always going to have new decisions.
It's not, it never ends, Desi, you know that and we know that. I just think it's worth saying that you're never going to arrive and be like, my website is perfect. My social media is perfect. My SOPs, my standard operating procedures are perfect. My pricing is perfect.
My service models are perfect. And I'm just really good at marketing. I've never heard anyone say that because you never feel all those things at once, because it's living and breathing and changing daily.
Desi: Yeah. And isn't it interesting, though, how often we want to cling to the possibility that could be true.
Nancy: I know. Well, I do end up telling my clients at some points, like one client was so funny. She's like, “Okay, I've worked with other coaches before. And I, I don't feel as overwhelmed as I feel like I should feel working with you.” And I said, "Well, what was the goal to make you more money and have a more balanced life?" And she's like, yeah.
I said, "How's your numbers? And how's your life?” And she's like, “I need more to do and I'm making more than ever.” I said, “Okay, so now you have to decide, are we using that time to spend more time with our husband who's retired and with our kids who want to spend more time with us? Are we going for a next level in our business?”
Are we creating a hobby that we've always wanted? Imagine having choices.
Desi: Yeah, I know. And that's what profitability gives you. When you use your time in a way that is leveraged and we're talking about today, profitability gives you choice. And I think there is no greater place to be as an empowered CEO.
Nancy: Definitely. Which... Okay. So it brings me to my last tip because I know we want to wrap up. We don't want to keep everybody too long.
We know you're all busy and you need to leverage your time to increase your profit. So my last tip is really leveraging your sourcing. There are so many different ways as interior designers, you can source. You can go directly to manufacturers, you can go to buying groups, you can go to some one of these couple of these service companies that now do your whole back end for you. They order track, deliver placement and give you your commission. All of that can be leveraged depending on what you want your life, your business, how many hours you want to work, how big your staff should be.
These are all decisions you have to make that can create additional profitability for you if you make this decision properly, right? So some older designers don't want to do, or some newer designers don't know how to don't want to do the ordering tracking delivery placement of the product they've sold. They want to just do the design work. Well, you know what? You can have a profitable business and do just that by leveraging your sourcing properly, or you can increase your profitability and use more of your own time or your staffing time to go directly to manufacturers and do order, ordering, tracking, delivery yourself.
So that's one choice, but you also can use your reps to help you with the sourcing. And as a previous art consultant, I used to love when I worked with a designer multiple times. I'd get to know their style, what they like, what they don't like. And then at some point, they would just send me fabric, send me some images, and go, can you find artwork for this? You know what I like, right?
So they were using their rep and I wasn't charging for that time. But if it took me two hours to give them a selection, they could charge for those two hours. Their client does not have to know they delegated that to me and that they didn't have to pay for it. So these ways of using your reps, your sourcing properly, can really change the profitability of your company and reduce the amount of time that you're doing things you don't have to do. So that's another thing we like to share and teach people.
Desi: I love that. And I remember doing that quite a bit myself back in the day. And I think that in general, the reps are really excited to help you out.
Nancy: They are usually and if they're not...
Desi: Go find somebody else.
Nancy: That's where I say leveraging your sourcing. Also, it matters like, you know what, there's 50 companies who you could buy sofas from, and I'm under, you know, this thousands, actually, what are your top three for doing and keep a spreadsheet. So you go right to it. You don't have to think every time I'm looking for a new company for a new style for new. For the most part, most of your jobs probably fall into a certain category.
You can get your trusted suppliers with the reps that actually help you with your time.
Desi: Yeah. And then you start to increase your volume and then potentially negotiate better pricing, which will increase your profitability. It just makes a lot of sense. And I think one of the things that's interesting about that tip is thinking about, do you have any internal resistance to doing this? I'm thinking of this specifically for the listener is when Nancy says, leverage your sourcing, ask other people to do these things.
Do you have an internal, that's not okay. That's like skirting the system. I should do it myself. I don't want to be a burden or ask for help. Just notice what's coming up for you with that tip.
Nancy: And I will tell you, I'll add to what you your list, which was really well said, they also think, but I'm the designer, shouldn't I be doing it? And it's my work, but they don't realize, nobody knows you're using your assistant in the background or a rep to give you a tip, or if it took you an hour to find a sofa of a certain size, shape, whatever, and you didn't get there, are you going to spend another hour going down a rabbit hole? Are you going to go down to your rep and going, I'm looking for a 72 inch sofa with this, that, the other thing, whatever it is, you give them the parameters that will match your design and let them come back with five options. It's a beautiful thing. You're still making the final decision but you have somebody helping you look.
And most of the time, more sets of eyes when it comes to things like that is very helpful.
Desi: Yeah. And I'm even thinking going down the rabbit hole, that comment. Typically, what I see with clients or designers that I speak with when you go down the rabbit hole is when you tend to shave off hours if you're charging hourly. And of course, if you're a flat fee, then that really tanks the profitability as well. So it's like you can kind of just sidestep around your own internal negotiation about what you should charge for, and just ask the rep for help.
And everyone's going to be better off for it.
Nancy: Yes. Agreed.
Desi: Love it. These were so great. This was really fun going back and forth too. And I feel like I need to give a recap.
Nancy: Yes.
Desi: We had a winding conversation. So just to bring it on home for everyone listening, what we talked about first is having results-based planning versus to-do-based planning.
Nancy: Number 2, you want me to say it?
Desi: Oh, sure. Yeah, let's do it that way.
Nancy: Okay. Number 2 was my first tip was recording and summarizing your consults using AI.
Desi: Then I talked about using focus times and self accountability to move the needle on projects and back end business initiatives.
Nancy: And then I talked about utilizing VA, a virtual assistant to help with some projects that can move the needle in your company and make you more money and make you more profitable by not having to do everything yourself.
Desi: Next, I brought up the key piece of honoring your capacity and being very clear on what you're saying yes and no to in order to move towards your financial and lifestyle goals.
Nancy: And finally, we talked about leveraging your sourcing by using your reps and understanding where you get things from to make it quick for you so you don't get stuck going down the rabbit hole of sourcing. So all together, I'd say this was six ways to leverage their time and increase their profitability. These were some really solid tips I think we gave today.
Desi: Yeah. And as I'm thinking about the ones that we covered, they also aren't going to be ones that take listeners a lot of time to implement.
Nancy: That's right. Not a lot of time at all.
Desi: No. There might be a little bit of setup with some of them depending on which one we're talking about. But this really doesn't have to be, now I'm going to take this episode and make a long list of all these to-dos that I have to do. And hopefully, I'll get to it at some point and then be more profitable. These are all things that you could...
I mean, you could just pick one thing that we shared today and get going with it immediately. So I love it.
Nancy: Definitely.
Desi: Yeah. Oh, this was so great, Nancy. I loved having you on here and sharing your perspective. If listeners want to go check you out a little bit more, get a hold of any of those tools that you mentioned, can you give us a recap on where to find you?
Nancy: So right now, as of February 2025, you can find me at nancyganzekaufer.com. I did get married. I am now Nancy Quinn, but our website is still the same. And in the future, it's going to be profitinsiderscoaching.com. But you know what, Desi, everyone can go into my Facebook group, which is almost 10,000 designers at this point, the Interior Design Business Forum.
Ask to get in there. And everything I offer and all my links are in there as well. So that's a great place for people to go and actually get support from each other as well. It's a really active group.
Desi: I have noticed that. It does seem like a really active group because I'm in this. I don't like comment on things, but I occasionally get tagged or whatnot. And yeah, it's a really active group. So that's a great resource and totally free for people.
So definitely check that out. And of course, we'll have all the links in the show notes for people.
Nancy: Oh, Desi, can I mention one other thing?
Desi: Yeah.
Nancy: We just came out this week with a free resource called Design Your Time. And it's basically it has you take your Myers-Briggs personality type, get your code, what your personality type is, you actually get a report from it. And then you go do our training, which is basically time management tips based on your Myers-Briggs personality type. So it's kind of cool. And it's a free opt-in to help people really hone in on which time management tips would possibly help them based on their personality.
Desi: Oh, that's a really interesting perspective.
Nancy: Yeah, go take it.
Desi: Yeah, I might have to.
Nancy: It's fun.
Desi: Yeah, I'm curious what I would be. All right. Cool.
Nancy: Yeah, Yeah. So that's free. That's on the top of the website or in the group and it's on Instagram. And I'm still... I think it's still @nancyganzekaufer on Instagram.
So yeah, find me by my name for now. And then eventually it'll be the Profit Insider's Coaching.
Desi: Okay. And I just... I have to say I'm going to probably have a really hard time mentally making that switch in my head to Quinn. I know. So if I ever refer to you,
Nancy: It's much easier.
esi: So I'll catch myself. I know, but I just figured out how to pronounce your name. I know. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.
Okay, everyone. Thank you for tuning in and thank you again, Nancy, for joining us. And of course, I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Until then, I'm wishing you a beautiful week.
Thanks for joining me for this week’s episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit www.desicreswell.com. And if you’re ready to take what you’ve learned on the podcast to the next level, I would love for you to check out my signature group coaching program, Out of Overwhelm.
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