March 13, 2025 • 54 mins
Jackie Green, founder of Behind the Design, takes us on a fascinating discussion through the intersection of interior design, entrepreneurship, and the transformative power of AI for small businesses.
Jackie's background uniquely positions her as a guide for creative entrepreneurs – with degrees in both journalism/marketing and interior design, plus experience teaching at design school, she discovered a critical gap in business education for designers. This realization sparked her company's mission: helping design professionals build successful businesses through strategic marketing and now, AI implementation.
What makes Jackie's approach refreshingly practical is her decision-making framework. She evaluates every business opportunity through three lenses: revenue generation, visibility, and client work. This system allows entrepreneurs to filter their constant stream of "brilliant ideas" against established priorities rather than chasing every shiny object.
The heart of our conversation explores how AI is revolutionizing small business operations. Jackie candidly shares her initial "cheater's guilt" when using AI tools, before recognizing them as productivity multipliers. From QuickBooks AI auto-populating invoices to Otter AI handling meeting notes and follow-ups, these tools don't replace human creativity – they enhance it by freeing entrepreneurs from administrative burdens.
We also tackle the vulnerabilities of social media marketing. When Jackie's business got hacked on Facebook, resulting in the complete loss of her company page, group, and personal profile, it highlighted why email marketing remains the true "gold mine" for small businesses. Unlike social platforms, your email list is an asset you actually own.
For interior designers specifically, Jackie offers invaluable insights on creating lead magnets that address client pain points (like surviving a kitchen renovation) without falling into the scarcity mindset trap. As she brilliantly illustrates with the story of a plumber whose tutorial videos actually grew his business: sharing knowledge doesn't diminish your value – it establishes expertise and builds trust.
Learn more about Jackie below.
Jackie's Book Recommendation for Listeners: Worthy by Jamie Kern Lima
Jacqueline Green is the driving force behind Behind the Design, a strategic marketing partner for businesses in the design, construction, and real estate investment sectors. As a seasoned commercial interior designer, former college instructor, and highly experienced marketing expert, Jacqueline and her team deliver strategic marketing solutions that drive substantial growth, bolster brand credibility, and achieve superior business outcomes.
Linked In: jacquelinereed
YouTube: @BehindtheDesignCo
Instagram: behindthedesignco
House of JerMar: houseofjermar.com.
Instagram: instagram.com/houseofjermar/
YouTube Channel: youtube.com/@Houseofjermar
Read Jeanne's Book: Two Feet In: Lessons From and All-In Life
WELCOME TO OUR HOUSE!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We break it out in is this revenue, is this
visibility or client work?
And so those are our threepriorities.
And so when we hold things upto that test, we say, okay, does
this fit within those realms?
Then that also tells us if weneed to work on it and at what
priority level.
Of course, client work isalways going to be over
(00:20):
everybody else.
But revenue constantly havingrevenue in our business and
constantly finding more revenuecoming into our business,
finding more clients, includingretaining existing clients, is
really important.
And then the visibilityVisibility to me is an easy
aspect.
It's not always easy toeverybody, but it's what I know
from my marketing mind, and so Itend to, when I get overwhelmed
(00:42):
, to do the visibility thingsrather than the sales things,
Because that's just naturallywhere my comfort zone is.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Welcome to the House of Germar podcast where wellness
starts within.
The House of Germar is alifestyle brand, empowering
women to live all in throughinterior design and personal
wellness.
We are a destination for womenready to reimagine what is
possible in their homes andlives and then create it.
We are honored to have you joinus on our mission to empower 1
(01:15):
million women to live all in.
I am your host, jean Collins,and I invite you to become
inspired by this week's guest.
Welcome to the House of Germapodcast, where wellness starts
within.
I'm your host, jean Collins,and today's guest is somebody
that I don't know and I just met, but I'm so excited to talk to
(01:35):
her.
Her name is Jackie Green andshe is the founder and the
driving force behind, behind thedesign, and I am so excited
because she helps interiordesigners.
We're going to talk about notjust interior designers, also
small businesses and one of myfavorite exciting new topics
that I don't talk about often onthe podcast.
We are going to talk about AIguys.
So, jackie, welcome to the show.
I'm so excited to have you.
(01:56):
Thank you, I am really excitedto be here.
Oh, thank you.
So, before we get into you andhow you got to what you do.
Let's talk about your businessbehind the design and what does
your agency if agency is thecorrect word to use for you, but
I would kind of put you in thestrategic marketing partnership
realm is probably what you wantto be called.
(02:16):
What do you guys do?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
We originally were born to.
In the sense, this idea thatcame to my mind was to kind of
help educate after college.
So I was teaching at the designschool and thought, okay, how
do we help our designers afterthey get out of college?
And, like running a business,nobody teaches you how to run a
business.
And so it kind of started therein the education realm.
(02:39):
Well then it went to I mean,our clients need a lot more than
just that education part of it.
Let's start offering marketingservices.
And my background was inmarketing before.
I was an interior designer andso I decided, okay, we'll start
offering that.
And then this year we'reactually starting to get into
the AI which we're going to talkabout today.
It's really offering AIconsulting and helping people
(03:01):
really, you know, expand theirbusiness and grow their business
, grow their revenue using AIsolutions.
And so it's kind of become thisall-encompassing solution to
really help small businesses.
And it started in interiordesign, but then we opened up to
architects and design buildsand construction and it's kind
of blossomed from there.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
I love how things just sort of take on new life.
They do, and I've had otherguests who have specialized in
the arts world and they found,oh, they were providing a
service to artists and all of asudden found out, oh, it's not
just artists who need theseservices, it's all entrepreneurs
, and so you will probably findthat's going to happen for you
(03:41):
as well.
It's not just as you're finding, it's not just interior
designers, it's all these othertouch points within that
industry.
But then you can very closelyand quickly make a leap to other
industries as well, which isexciting as a business owner.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
It really is.
It makes it fun, and one of thethings I love about being a
business owner is that every dayis different.
Some days are hard, some daysare good, but at least I'm never
bored.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Never bored, never bored.
So you talked a little bitabout how you got to be a
business owner, but let's dig alittle bit deeper into that.
So what is your background,what's your educational
background and what was the paththat really got you to deciding
I'm going to take that leap andbecome an entrepreneur, because
that is a big leap.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Sure, I originally have a bachelor's in journalism
(04:40):
with a focus in advertising andmarketing.
So when I got out of college Iwent into marketing for a small
business but eventually landedwhere something was, I don't
know.
I just wasn't satisfied.
I guess I just kind of wastired, burned out.
So I decided to do marketingconsulting and I did that for
about seven years and that wasfun.
But I burned out again and I'lltell you why.
(05:01):
One of the biggest challenges Ihad was how do I grow this
beyond myself?
We can talk about that later.
But so I ended up going back toschool and I became an interior
designer.
I worked for three differentarchitecture firms.
I was a commercial interiordesigner.
I was invited back to thecollege I went to for my second
degree and taught there forabout five years.
(05:23):
And that's kind of how Behindthe Design was born is it came
out of all the challenges I sawwithin those architecture firms
of how in corporate America theydo a good job if you ask for it
, in the sense of giving you thedollars to expand your skills.
They either bring programs in,they send you to conferences, or
(05:45):
at least that was my experiencewhen I went into architecture
and in the entire design world.
There was none of that.
There was no support.
You're supposed to have so manycredit hours to extend your
license every year, butcontinuing ed.
But there was.
I had no idea, and so there was.
I saw a real need in there, andso that's when I decided to go
(06:07):
back out on my own and startoffering up services to these
design firms and architecturefirms that needed something
outside of what they werecurrently getting internally.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah, and there's a huge need.
I say to people all the timejust going to interior design
school does not teach you at allhow to run a business.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
It doesn't teach you anything, and it's the same.
Doesn't teach you anything,nothing.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
No marketing, no, no, nothing.
You have to figure that out.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
And I love teaching.
It was really fun.
I love working with thestudents.
But I figured out, like Itaught commercial interior
design, I had those students for30 hours in a semester.
I don't know anybody who canteach their job at 30 hours and
be like, yeah, go ahead, go dothis Right, you're ready to
start on your own?
Go fly.
Yeah.
And at that point they're justdrinking from a fire hose
(06:56):
because a lot of my studentswere taking three to five
classes.
They're just trying to take itall in and you just physically
can't take it all in and we'renot really teaching.
Whether it be design school orarchitecture, whether it be you
know dentists, lawyers, you knowevery type of service base.
We're not teaching you how toactually run a business.
We teach in design school atleast the one I did, and it was
(07:20):
a class I actually created wasaround professional practice,
kind of giving students an ideaof what to expect, how, the
behind the scenes kind of thingof how businesses run.
But it couldn't go into thedetail of but here's how you run
your business.
And so I started using myexpertise and it kind of came
out of me actually helping mycollege age son at the time he
(07:43):
was in college and he would comehome and ask me questions
during his internship and belike, oh, mom, because he got a
marketing internship, Well, howdo I do this?
They want me to do this, and sothat was our dinner
conversations, and I realizedthere was a lot of information
that I had that I knew that Icould share with other people
and help them.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yeah, how do you like being an entrepreneur?
Is it scary?
Speaker 1 (08:06):
It's scary and awesome and scary and I think
I'm a little crazy, and I'mpretty sure that every
entrepreneur is a little crazy.
You have to be crazy to do thisand in the other way, it's also
so exciting that you get up andI get to do this every day and
so even on the days that'sreally hard and I'm again, I'm
(08:30):
pretty sure that I'm a littlenutty, but it's fun.
I like getting up.
I get excited every day of whatcan I do differently, what can
I improve on, how can I help myclients?
You know what's an idea?
Speaker 2 (08:49):
I'm inevitably always waking up thinking of some new
little idea, of going oh, wecould do this, this would be so
much fun, yeah, so how do youreel the ideas in?
Because anyone who's listeningto this, who's an entrepreneur
or thinking of becoming anentrepreneur I personally find
that is one of my biggestchallenges is I have so many I'm
(09:09):
going to put this in air quotes, for people aren't watching
brilliant ideas, at least that Ithink are brilliant and feel
brilliant at the time.
But yet as an entrepreneur, youcan't do everything.
So how do you decide whatyou're going to do?
How do you make that decisionfor?
Speaker 1 (09:22):
yourself.
It's really interesting becausewhat I do is I write it down
because you want to write downthe idea.
Just because now might not bethe right time doesn't mean
never.
It just means right now thismay not be our focus.
I have a whiteboard in myoffice that has our priorities.
Does this fit within ourpriorities?
And if it doesn't fit, thenit's got to go on the back
(09:43):
burner.
If I can slide it in there andit does fit and it goes along
with our goals, then okay, let'sexplore it.
One thing I started doing Ididn't realize I could do,
speaking of AI, is I startedasking chat.
Now I subscribe and have thesubscription to chat, so I have
taught it who I am, what mybrand is, what I offer our
(10:05):
clients.
We have been chatting for along time now, so I feel like
it's a real person and everymorning I'm like good morning
chat.
That's funny.
And so I started giving theseideas and started sharing the
ideas in chat.
I came out this idea chat andhere what do you think?
Can you please go out and dosome research and tell me is
this a viable idea?
What would I need to do to makethis happen?
(10:27):
What are some of the negativesof this and I started kind of my
research there and kind oflooking at it versus starting
with oh, let's just dive rightin, because it at least gave me
at least a starting point ofwhere I needed If this was
really an idea I want to go with.
It gives me an idea of where toactually start and breaks it
(10:50):
down.
And so, like a lot of people, Isuffer from this big idea.
How do I break it down intosmaller pieces?
And as an entrepreneur, likeyou know, we have these great
ideas but we don't necessarilyhave the time, the detail to
really kind of break it down, tomake it into smaller bite
pieces and make it work.
(11:11):
And so that gets me to thestarting point and that's how I
kind of rang in those ideas.
I still throw them in my littlebook and my little notebook and
, yes, I'm still a paper personor a pen.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
I love paper pen.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
But then I go back to them and say, okay, is it time
for this or not time for this?
And then the other part of thattoo, which I've really explored
in the last year, is energy.
Is there energy behind this?
Is this making me excitedinside?
I mean every idea.
When you get a brilliant idea,because they're all brilliant,
you know Of course.
Of course we all get excited.
(11:48):
But am I really excited aboutthis?
Let's sit on this for a momentand just see.
And when I mean a moment, Imean let's sit on it for days,
weeks and kind of feel how doesmy energy relate to how this
works I am not woo-woo at all,I've got to say that to how this
works.
I am not woo-woo at all, I gotto say that.
But working on my energy andunderstanding that inner energy,
(12:08):
that we all are full of energy,has really kind of helped me
settle down and really put theenergy I have into the right
things for the business.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Oh, I love that.
Have you ever done human designand had your chart read?
Speaker 1 (12:22):
I did, I did my chart a while back.
I actually know a woman.
I sat on a board with a womanwho does human design for people
.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
It's actually very interesting and I found, from a
making business decisionperspective, it really helped me
to understand the best way forme to make business decisions,
especially around the new ideasunderstanding how my body
naturally wants to function andthe energy and the way that I
naturally want to decide, versuslike jumping right in the
(12:51):
minute I come up with the idea,which is actually where I tend
to want to go.
But recognizing that, yes, youknow just everything is a great
idea, but you know, having yourpillars, having your, what are
your goals, what do you want tostand for?
What do you want to accomplishthis year?
Trying to stick true to yourbrand I think a lot of
entrepreneurs struggle with thatand I'm sure that's something
(13:13):
that you really help people isto really identify who are you,
because that's the other thingthey don't teach in school at
all anywhere.
It's like really trying toidentify who's your target
audience and who.
Who are you, who's your brand,what's your uniqueness?
Because a lot of people I knowI came out of design school and
I was like I'll design foranyone who has money and it's
like, and it's so true and it'scase in all you want to right
(13:34):
and you want in every business.
You're like I'm an entrepreneur,I'll take money from anyone,
but that's really I don't wantto starve.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
I'm gonna just take this job, even though I know
this guy's a jerk and he's goingto try to undercut me on every
single thing, but I'll take itbecause I need money.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
It's like, no, we need to back up and that's not a
good marketing strategy.
Yes, and a lot of us needpeople like you to help with the
parameters, with the guardrails, to help people identify who
are you, what is your brand,what do you want to focus on?
What are your priorities forthis year?
And you mentioned prioritiesand I think, as we're moving
(14:09):
into a new year, because we'rerecording this in January I
think it's important to writeyour priorities and also be okay
to reevaluate those prioritiessix months into the year,
because they might change.
But you need some sort oflitmus test to evaluate your
ideas against.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Absolutely and we break it out in is this revenue,
is this visibility or clientwork?
And so those are our threepriorities.
And so when we hold things upto that test, we say, okay, does
this fit within those realms?
Then that also tells us if weneed to work on it and at what
priority level.
Of course, client work isalways going to be over
(14:43):
everybody else.
But revenue constantly havingrevenue in our business and
constantly finding more revenuecoming into our business,
finding more clients, includingretaining the existing clients,
is really important.
And then the visibilityVisibility to me is an easy
aspect.
It's not always easy toeverybody, but it's what I know
from my marketing mind, and so Itend to, when I get overwhelmed
(15:05):
, to do the visibility thingsrather than the sales things,
because that's just naturallywhere my comfort zone is.
Of course, you always go towhat's comfortable first.
So when I started breaking itdown, going okay, hold on, am I
doing a visibility thing, whichis the last of the priorities at
this point, versus a revenuething?
I need to work on the revenuebefore I work on the visibility,
(15:26):
and that's really hard to dobecause visibility is more fun.
But back to your point on thebranding and the strategy.
So many business owners,especially ones that are new or
just getting started, don't havea real strong strategy.
They're just kind of throwingspaghetti at a wall, going, okay
, is this going to stick, isthis going to work?
(15:46):
And when we back up and say,okay, what is our strategy, what
is that audience we want toreach, who is that ideal
audience?
But a lot of times we're afraidto go talk to that audience and
actually ask them hey, what doyou want, what do you need?
And that is one of the biggestmistakes we make as
entrepreneurs.
Because I saw a stat the otherday of we know that the stats
(16:09):
show that businesses startups,you know really struggle to stay
in business.
It is a really high stat, butthis statistics and I can't
remember if it was like 62% orsomething of why companies fail
is because nobody actuallywanted their product.
And that's a really importantaspect If you aren't talking to
(16:30):
your audience or that primaryaudience, to know if you're what
you're selling is important tothem.
Just because you think yourclient needs something, it
doesn't mean that they want that, and there's a big difference
of what they need and what theywant.
And so it's important to kindof look at that of saying, okay,
what is our client, what is ourstrategy for hitting that
(16:52):
client?
And you're really stayingfocused on that.
And that is really hard forentrepreneurs, because we do
have these great minds that giveus these great, brilliant ideas
all the time, of course.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yes, yes, well, and you make such an interesting
point because sales comes intothe whole sales adage of give
them what they want but showthem what they need.
And normally, especially ininterior design, it's like, by
the way, you do need this customcoffee table, but you have to
give them what they want first,and then you show them what they
(17:22):
don't realize that they need intheir environment in order to
like, really pull the room alltogether.
Artwork is a perfect example inthe design world.
People will say like I don'treally care about the artwork,
and it's like, oh, but then whenyou design a room and you show
them this amazing piece ofartwork that brings it all
together, you're like, no, youactually need the artwork, you
really do need the artwork.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
You really do.
But when we look at it that wayand think about it okay, you're
absolutely right, let's satisfythat need first and then show
them the extra stuff, thatreally helps bring it all
together.
It does help and it makesselling also easier for us.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
It does.
Yeah, it definitely does.
So let's talk about socialmedia, and you and I hadn't
talked about this in advance,but I would love to pick your
brain about social media.
So how do you help your clientsnavigate the universe of social
media and how they can use thatfor their brands?
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Well, one social media is constantly changing and
we know, just within the lastweek and a half of the new year,
there have been severalannouncements out of Facebook of
how they're changing differentaspects.
There have been severalannouncements out of Facebook of
how they're changing differentaspects.
One thing that was interesting,especially with Facebook, is
that and I knew this was comingand I had kind of done a video
(18:33):
on it talking about this I feellike I no longer see my family
and friends on Facebook.
I only see big brands.
Well, it turns out that theyfinally announced this, I think
in December.
Hey, we're actually going toput your likes before your
family and friends, so whateveryou like or engage with is
(18:54):
actually going to show up inyour feed before the family and
friends, which, for those of uswho have crazy families, that
might be a great thing, but wehave to understand that from a
business standpoint of how weutilize that to the extent.
One thing that's reallyimportant, whether it be
Facebook or Instagram, is thatengagement part is they will
(19:15):
show people content that isengaging, that other people have
engaged with.
So I think the number is like5%.
So if you have a thousandpeople followers and you send
out a post, it's only reallygoing to go to 50 people and
then if those 50 people engagewith that content, then it might
(19:36):
show to another 50 people andthat's an important aspect.
So when we went back andstarted looking at, okay, why
were some things working and whyweren't some things working, it
comes to that engagement part,knowing those algorithms and the
changes that come about.
A regular business owner whohas the entire business to run
does not have the time to knowthose little odysseys and those
(19:58):
little things.
It's not what they absorb intoand want to.
You know, learn aboutconstantly.
We've really been looking atorganic versus paid and honestly
, paid is if you really haveeyes and you really have an
offer, you're going to have tomix pay in there with your
organic.
You can't just get by withorganic anymore.
(20:21):
Unfortunately, it's just notthere.
It doesn't mean you have tospend a lot of money, but it
does mean that you have to startusing that as part of your
strategy.
But that is our job, and how wehelp clients is we know these
things.
This is our job to make surewe're staying on top of this.
Linkedin is one of the biggestopportunities right now,
especially if you're selling B2Bor you're selling B2C, b2b,
(20:46):
being business, business orbusiness consumers.
Even if you have a high levelconsumer, linkedin might still
be where you're at.
Interior design is a perfectexample.
Interior design service is notcheap.
The products that we sell arenot cheap, so we want a client.
Most of our clients areprofessionals.
Well, guess where professionalshang out?
Linkedin before they hang outnecessarily on Facebook or
(21:08):
Instagram?
Yeah, so knowing thatinformation, and then video and
YouTube.
Youtube is just one big, hugesearch engine, that's all it is.
And so, when you look at it,instead of saying this is social
, no, this is a search engine, Iwant to be there.
And video is the fastestgrowing area and we need to be
out there.
And that can be reallyoverwhelming for a lot of people
(21:31):
who aren't comfortable withbeing in front of a camera.
Yeah, with sharing theirknowledge.
I have a client who we weretalking about her social media
strategy.
She had hired us to create thatstrategy, her entire marketing
strategy, and she's like Inoticed that my videos that I'm
just sitting in front of thecamera talking actually get more
(21:52):
engagement and likes than theones that are like high
production and I've really put alot of you know, hired someone
to help me and it's like, yeah,that's because you're being
authentic and people can feelthe difference versus when it's
highly produced.
You know it's highly produced,Okay, but when I can actually
feel who you are and sense whoyou are and that you're being
(22:12):
authentic, that's actually goingto engage people, far before
the overproduced, perfectlooking videos.
And it's just an adjustment.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
And so a lot of those things.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
this is what we do, and so we look at that and test
it and see what's working,what's not working, and try to
help our clients through that.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Love it.
So you give me a great reminder.
I have LinkedIn sort of overhere talking to me in the
background being like youhaven't posted, you haven't
posted, you haven't posted.
I'm like I know.
So I post on all the otherplatforms, but I know I need
especially for what I do, I needto be on LinkedIn more often.
So thank you for that reminder.
Let's talk about AI with socialmedia.
So how are you leveraging AI tohelp your clients come up with
(22:54):
even things like content ideas?
Because that is what so manypeople struggle with is what do
I talk about, and does anybodyactually really care?
Speaker 1 (23:04):
That is so true.
When I first started using AI,I started using chat early in
2023.
So not too far after it startedbecoming a big thing.
I felt like I was cheating, soI would plug in there and you
and I kind of talked about thisbefore I would.
Literally it would tell mehere's 10 ideas that you can go
with with this idea, and I felthorrible.
(23:26):
I felt like I was the biggestcheater on the face of the earth
and I love writing and thathere it is.
It's writing my headline for meand it's better than what I
produced.
So, it took me a little while toshift my brain and go.
Wait a minute, hold on, I haveway too much to do, but that's
the truth of the matter.
I have these ideas.
I know where I want to takethis company.
It is not moving fast enough.
(23:48):
I don't know if it ever willmove fast enough for my own
drive and inner drive that Ihave.
Why am I not using AI to help mewith these things?
And so that's when I reallystarted digging into it and I
ended up getting asked to go toa design build firm and talk to
them about how AI could helpthem.
Because I'd written a fewarticles and somebody an old
(24:09):
student of mine had read thearticle, took it to the owner
and said we need to have her in,and I started looking at how
the different AI programs couldreally help in different areas
of that company.
So Design Build is a companythat does both the interior
design, architecture design, aswell as the construction part of
it, and so for each departmentand there were five, basically I
(24:33):
looked at okay, here's AIsolutions that can help you with
all these I realized that Icould help other small
businesses with the same thingwhen we look at AI and, yes,
there is a negative annotationabout AI that, oh, it's going to
take over the world.
We're all going to lose ourjobs.
No, it still needs that humorand interaction.
You still have to train it.
You still have to use theinformation.
(24:55):
I think, instead, it's going tomake us smarter, it's going to
make us more productive.
I think it's going to also helpus more efficient and be able
to better serve our clients, andso when we really start looking
at it from that standpoint,it's like, okay, well, if I can
cheat, where am I going to cheatat?
So, whether it be accountinglike QuickBooks, I was looking
(25:20):
at the QuickBooks AI solution.
I've used QuickBooks for years,but now there's a little AI
tool that you just put in theinvoice that you paid or the
receipt that you have, throw itin there, and it auto auto
populates.
So I don't have to go in andtype all of that.
Wow, I still have to confirm it, yes, but it's all.
It'll actually read it for meand type that in and put it
(25:43):
where it's supposed to be nowthat is so much more helpful
than me sitting there typingthis of going, okay, I bought
this on one one, I paid with itor with this.
This is da, da, da da.
Here's why it was what thething?
It's saving time.
So something that simple isreally can really help your
business and help you be moreproductive, and I really believe
(26:04):
, for small to medium businesses, that this is a huge game
changer, that you can get moredone with the help of AI.
You just need to figure out andthat's where we started
offering this AI consultingservice because we wanted to
help companies going in thereand looking at what systems do
you currently have that arereally causing you problems.
(26:25):
So, whether you've formallywritten down the systems that
you currently run your business,there are still systems there,
and so what we do is we help youkind of go through all your
systems when are theefficiencies, where are the
inefficiencies?
Where can AI help you andfigure out the right products
for you and build that strategyand help train your employees?
(26:46):
Because that's really what'simportant is how can I use this
to cheat?
Speaker 2 (26:52):
And looking at it, it's like you're cheating, but
at the same time, you're reallyjust making yourself more
efficient, because, no matterhow you use AI, every time I've
used it it might spit somethingout for me, but I'm never
leaving it as it is.
It's sort of like oh wow, I hadto write a letter, or oh wow, I
had to develop a process and Ineed sort of like some
standardized form, and it's likeyou know what it did, like 80%
(27:14):
of the legwork for me and, toyour point, as it starts to get
to know you more and more, itcan write in a way that sounds
more like you.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Yeah, absolutely, and you can teach it your brand,
you can teach it the audienceyou want to reach, but you're
100%, it still needs that humaninteraction.
Anything that comes out ofthere, we're still looking at it
, going, okay, this isn't quiteright.
This needs to be changed thisway.
But a lot of times, what itdoes come up with is things that
I forgot.
So often maybe you're putting aproposal together and I've done
(27:45):
this before.
I'm writing a proposal for aclient and I'm writing out
everything that I believe shouldbe in that proposal.
I have thrown my proposal intochat, gpt and said, hey, what am
I missing?
You know, these are the thingsthey're wanting.
This is the problem I'm having.
What am I missing?
And then it will come back andsay, hey, what about this?
(28:05):
I'm like, oh, I should havewritten that in.
That's totally.
I should have pointed that outin the proposal, because you
want your proposal as thoroughas you possibly can.
Another proposal because youwant your proposal as thorough
as you possibly can.
Another tool that we use iscalled Otter AI and it's a tool
that basically records your Zoomcalls.
So if you're meeting with aclient, say it's a prospect,
(28:26):
otter AI will listen in, willtake notes for you and then
shoot out and give you.
Here were the action items forthat meeting.
No, it doesn't.
It's not perfect.
There might be something inthere going well that we did
discuss that, but that isn't apriority or that's not an action
item.
But it's a lot better than mesitting down after the meeting,
spending a half hour going okay,what were my notes on that?
(28:46):
What did they say here?
What was I doing here?
It works and it's not thatexpensive.
And to me, to make sure thatwe're getting recapping that
customer experience and thensending to the customer that
recap, now I'm going to changeit.
I do change it into my ownwords.
Yes, my own format.
But say hey, here's a recap ofthe meeting.
(29:06):
Do you agree with all theseto-dos?
Are we all set?
You are confirming with theclient that you are listening to
them.
They're also getting thatfeeling of oh wow, somebody's
actually listening to me, we'removing in the right direction
and we're going there in anefficient way.
That's a great use of a tool.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
What I find is really cool about that tool is you are
not focused on having to takenotes on the entire conversation
, and so it allows you, as abusiness owner and as an
entrepreneur, to really beengaged with your client and
listen to them, and listen towhat they're saying and have
them really listen to you,because they don't have to be
(29:44):
taking notes either.
And so when you say to them,I'm recording this, it's going
to be taking notes, I'm going tosend you back a summary, and
it's like, oh wow, I don't haveto be trying to multitask, I can
just be engaged in theconversation, and I find the
conversations are then so muchmore productive as a result.
So it's like you have a muchmore productive conversation
(30:05):
with your client and much moreproductive follow through.
That all happens so much faster, and you've cut hours out of
that whole dialogue process byusing AI.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Yeah, you really have cut hours out, and I think
there are tools or I know thereare tools in all different
aspects of business that we can.
Now I do believe that right now, we're seeing this crazy number
of AI solutions coming out.
I think the last time I heard,there were over 1600 solutions.
There's no way anybody can knowall those solutions and kind of
(30:37):
evaluate them for your business.
Nor should you, and I thinkwe're going to see similar.
For those who are old enough toremember the dot-com era, where,
when internet really came outand websites are coming out and
the dot-com made all thesedifferent services and not all
of them were really viable andweren't really set up to make
money.
They weren't sure how to makemoney yet at that point.
(31:00):
And I think AI is going to bethe same way.
We're going to see some ofthese programs kind of merge
together.
We're going to see some improve, we're going to see some go
away, and so it really is kindof a test of trial and error.
Okay, let's try this app orthis software and see, okay,
does this help me?
How does this fit within mysystem?
(31:21):
Is this going to work?
And so I think we have to alsobe smart about it and what is
realistic and what is that goingto look like?
But I think that we're going tosee this huge change and I feel
like if small businesses don'tget on board, they're really
going to lose out.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Yeah, because there's a lot that can help you with
your marketing materials, somany different things.
And I use Claude a lot.
I had someone introduce me toClaude.
I was using chat and I hadsomeone introduce me to Claude
for a different reason forspeech writing and it was really
helpful and just it has alittle bit different spin.
It's not as great.
(32:02):
I have found it's not as greatif I want, like, hooks for
social media you know, chatgptis like owning the hooks for
social media for sure, right,but it's been really helpful in
coming up with titles to things,summarizing speeches for me,
summarizing things I've written,and so I've used it a lot Like
here give me an outline ofsomething I've written, help me
understand which points shouldrequire a presentation slide and
(32:25):
which points should not, andthings like that, so you don't
have to think quite as muchabout so much of it.
It just gives you a startingpoint and sometimes it points
out things that, to your point,I don't see or I don't think of
and I'm like, oh, wow, that'sgood, I like that.
I'm going to twist that alittle, but I would have never
thought of that.
So it's brilliant.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Yeah, and that's awesome, and I'm still going to
try that out.
By the way, yeah, another toolis Perplexity.
Perplexity does research foryou.
Ooh, yes, and I've played withthat a lot and it is really
helping me find.
I want stats so I might write ablog article about, for
instance, I wrote one about SMSmarketing the other day which
(33:05):
text messaging and how we'reusing text messaging and is that
working for people?
Because I don't know about you,but we're all getting kind of
bombarded now with textmessaging from different brands.
And so I started looking at theresearch.
While I went into perplexity andsaid, hey, I want to research
this, this is what I'm lookingfor, and it started giving me it
would go out there and searchand look for those stats, and
(33:28):
that's what I really needed Now.
At first it came out with somestats that I was like that
doesn't sound quite right, thatseems awfully low, or that you
know.
So I went back to it and it'slike, okay, let me dig further.
And it came up some more things.
And so, just from a researchstandpoint, I remember when it
was such a big deal, when Googleactually was kind of new and
you can go out there and readdifferent.
(33:48):
You know articles and researchto help you improve your
marketing.
Well, now I can actually havethis perplexity, go out and do
it for me, and then I take thatinformation, use it within my
own writing, within my ownspeeches, whatever that is, and
that really has saved me a lotof time, saves so much time.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
I just wrote that down.
I was like, oh, I have to lookinto that one, because I've used
chat to do that and I've triedusing cloud to do that as well
Not as effectively.
Cloud's not good at that.
But I've also felt like youcan't just Google that anymore.
It doesn't work, like what youmight want might be on page 12
and we're never going to page 12.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
You're going to get bored before then and I think
that AI is taking over.
I was talking to.
I have a marketing manager, itworks for me and we were kind of
discussing this whole idea ofhow it's taking over search and
how search is going to have tochange.
So many people are now going tochat or going to some of these
other AIs and saying co-pilotsanother one and asking the
(34:46):
question there before they go toactual Google search and so how
we adjust and how we ask thosequestions are going to change.
I have a great example of that.
We were in San Diego last yearfor an event, for a conference,
(35:07):
and I wanted restaurants inwalking distance of the
convention center for lunch thatwere a medium price range,
medium to low price range.
It was lunch and I put mylittle criteria into Google and
I got Fleming's Del Frisco's Imean all these Morton's, all
these big and they weren't evenopen for lunch and I'm like why
don't you work like chat, whereI can put all my criteria and
(35:30):
you give me the right answer?
And I think that's where we'regoing to see that shift.
We're going to see people makeit's just going to happen.
And I know it's scary.
Everything is always scary whenyou're at the forefront of it.
But it's going to happen and itcan improve our lives if we go
after this with an ethical eye.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Yeah Well, and AI in the design world.
I think there's just so manycool things that can be
happening from a renderingperspective, from a 3D
perspective, from a helpingconsumers experience.
Like some of the technology, Ipersonally haven't been using it
, but I've seen it that otherdesigners at larger firms have
been using and it is really cool.
And it's like what if I justyou know what, if, instead of
(36:12):
making the sofa red, we want tomake it blue, and I want to make
it different, and I don't wantit to be that style and I want
the arms to be like this, andall of a sudden you put that in
and it's like bing bang, boom,it's changed your room right
there.
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
So cool.
It's so cool and when you'resitting in front of a client or
residential and you're talkingto them and you're just trying
to figure out what style theylike, because, remember your
clients, as an interior designer, they don't always know the
different styles like you do.
That's why they're hiring you.
But if you could take a pictureof their room and apply
different styles, just to kindof give an idea and say, hey, is
(36:46):
this something you might like?
Or what do you like about this,what do you not like about this
?
And start changing it and atleast do the schematic design
part, just kind of getting thoseideas before you really get
into design development, beforeyou even leave their house.
How amazing is that you havesaved yourself so many hours of
going back and forth with yourclient and go.
(37:06):
Well, I don't really like blues.
Well, they never told you thatin the first place?
It's like, why didn't you tellme that three meetings ago?
I don't know, I forgot.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
And so you really start.
You can.
It can really save you sometime.
Now that doesn't take away fromwhat you bring to the table,
that you were an amazingdesigner and you're going to put
all the pieces together Correct.
At least get you quicker tothat point where you're actually
doing the design development.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Yes, it gets some of the grunt work done.
That can take hours, quitehonestly hours and a Pinterest
board and walking them throughand listening to their feedback
and trying to understand theirstyle.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
It's all very time consuming it really is, and I
think those details that youmight be able to kind of get out
of them more quickly is reallygoing to help you, because
interior design people forgetthis is a very, very detailed
profession.
You have to know all the littlethings and I think there's a
(38:04):
place there for AI to reallyhelp in that area.
I agree, I agree.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
So let's talk quickly about email marketing.
If you would Sure, how are youleveraging email marketing for
your clients?
Because I see a lot onlineabout people saying, because of
the unpredictability of socialmedia, everyone who thinks they
have a marketing strategy inevery small business needs to
really invest in email marketing.
So I would love your point ofview of that.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Sure, and I totally agree with that.
Social media is unpredictable.
It really is, and it isconstantly changing and has been
constantly changing.
You cannot rely on it.
The other thing you have toknow about social media is that
you don't own your followers.
That algorithm changes.
Your followers are gone.
We actually got hacked onFacebook in October and we're
(38:49):
still being punished.
We still can't get it back onFacebook.
We lost our group, we lost ourcompany page, I lost my personal
page.
Just done.
That entire platform is gonefor us and it will be gone for
some time, because whoeverhacked it ended up putting
content out there, and so, eventhough I have physically talked
to them about hey, this wasn'tus, you can clearly see that it
(39:09):
wasn't us.
We reported the hacking Too bad, nothing we can do about it.
And so, all of a sudden, anentire channel for us blew up,
and so we really had to look atthat and go, okay, well, what's
what?
Speaker 2 (39:25):
It's a small business , that's painful.
You're like those are myfollowers, that's like my
potential future revenue.
Yeah it just disappeared.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
And so, when we look at it that way, it really came
to light.
Yeah, I was preaching this andsaying, hey, you need to bring
them on to your own email listand we have been doing that,
luckily.
But it really made a lot ofsense Poof gone, done nothing
there, Can't advertise, can't doanything on there, and we're
(39:59):
still.
I just checked before I got onhere because I wanted to see if
that was still the case.
And we're still being punished.
So, when we look at that, youremail list is literally your
gold mine because there arepeople on there and, yeah, it's
really easy to go.
Well, I sent out these emailsand like my open rates really
like 5% or 10%, whatever it is,yeah, but that might be the 5%
or 10% that you can bring inright now that need your product
at this very moment.
(40:19):
It gives you an opportunity toconstantly be serving your
clients.
It gives you an opportunity orprospects.
It gives you an opportunity andthis is a perfect example in
the interior design world,because I have so many designers
that don't realize themagnitude of having a lead
magnet and building that emaillist.
What happens is somebody comesto your site.
They see your picture in amagazine or see something about
(40:43):
you on one of the social andthey go to your website.
And the website is still yourfoundation.
We still need to be creatingthat website.
They look at you and they'relike, oh man, I really want to
hire her.
She's beautiful or he has thisgreat style I love.
But then they forget.
Life goes on, and so when youhave a lead magnet and you give
(41:03):
them something of educationmaybe it's 10 tips for
decorating during the holidaysor 10 tips on decluttering,
whatever it is they get on youremail list because they want
that free educational piece.
You're sharing just a littlebit of your process.
You have them in the hopper sothat when you start talking to
(41:25):
them and continuously givingthem more and more content, then
of course you're staying on topof mind with them.
Even if they're not opening it,even if they're not ready,
they're seeing it in their inboxand it's still triggering.
When I'm ready for that project, I know I'm going to hire her
or I'm going to hire him, and soit's really a huge avenue that
we really need to focus on.
(41:45):
And how you use your email listis so important and you can do
A-B testing.
A-b testing is where maybe youtest a different headline on a
landing page or on an email.
We test one thing at a time butgive my little disclaimers.
But there's so much we can do.
We can segment the market, youcan identify.
(42:06):
Well, okay, if these peopleasked for this lead magnet, then
I know they might be interestedin this new service that we're
offering.
Let's start marketing to them.
There is so much that you cando and you own that.
It's not like social, whereit'll go away in an instant or
it changes and you're not beingseen.
You actually want to bring theminto your own world.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Well and one thing I would think you could really
help your clients with is we allfeel like, okay, a lead magnet.
I read about this all the timeand I'm terrible at this.
I do now give stuff away, butit took a long time, and I don't
even necessarily give away theright stuff either, because one
of the things I think westruggle with as entrepreneurs
is like our brain only has thecapacity to think of so many
(42:50):
things, and so I hear all thetime you have to have a lead
magnet and I'm like, okay, butwhat is my lead magnet?
What are my subjects, whatwould be interesting?
And as I'm talking to you, I'msort of like, huh, once again,
maybe that's an interestingplace to go to AI and to go to
an agency like you to be like,hey, help me develop an email
(43:12):
marketing strategy so that I amcreating content in a lead
magnet that will actually stick,that people actually care about
.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
And that's exactly what I was going to say Just ask
AI.
It's not just ask AI.
You can ask your customers hey,what can I help you with this?
You can do one of the thingsthat as much as I as an interior
designer.
A few years back it's beenquite a few years, but we redid
our kitchen, yeah, and theconstruction experience was so
(43:44):
hard on us.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
It's so terrible.
Oh it's terrible.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
It's terrible.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Terrible.
People have no idea until theydo it, and I knew this.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
It's real easy.
When you're going to a job sitein somebody else's home, it's a
totally different thing.
When you're cooking on a hotplate upstairs, outside your
bedroom, and you're cleaningdishes in your bathroom, it is a
totally different experience.
It is a totally differentexperience.
So if that's a pain point foryour clients while they're
working with you, that might be.
(44:09):
Hey, here are tips on how toovercome the challenges of
construction, or it might be.
This is what to expect whileyou're in construction.
Eating out all the time washorrible.
I eventually got so tired ofeating out and missed my home
cooked food and we don't thinkabout that and as designers,
we're just like yeah, your housecan be torn up for a month.
Well, a month is always atleast six weeks, if not two
(44:32):
months, if not two months,exactly, yep, yeah, I was one of
those people.
I had everything ordered,everything was in the garage.
We were ready just to installblah, blah, blah.
Of course, everything's broken.
There was this, this wasforgotten, or this didn't get
ordered, or whatever.
There was always something.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
There's always something and it's all a process
.
There are steps.
It's like I can't give youwater back until everything is
finished and they can installthe counters, and that is like
really, at the end, it really is.
It really is at the end, and soit's like you cannot get water,
even though your dishwasher'sthere.
You cannot get water to usethat until your countersend.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
Yeah, and you know it's looking at the pain points
of what your audience isexperiencing.
That's where your lead magnetcomes out of what can you help
your clients with that is goingto eventually have them help
their lives.
But also remember you when it'stime they want to hire somebody
and I know a lot of designerstend to be this way a lot where
(45:32):
I don't want to share my secrets.
First of all, it's not a goodmindset, it's a scarcity mindset
and we want to approach things.
It goes back to that wholeenergy.
If there is plenty to go aroundand there's plenty of
opportunities, right, and so wewant to kind of get out of that
scarcity.
When we share our knowledge, itcomes back twofold.
(45:54):
When we help other people, itwill come back.
So whether you're giving thistool or this knowledge to
somebody, it could be them, itcould be their sister, their
sister-in-law, their brother, afriend, somebody else they're
referring to.
You might get five clients justas a result of helping that one
person that you didn'tnecessarily charge.
(46:14):
But it comes back to you.
There are opportunities there,and so to be afraid to share
that?
No, you're just kind ofbringing them into your world
and I guarantee for the people,especially in design the people
that are hiring you are hiringyou for you and for what you
(46:36):
have to offer them.
It's not anything else.
It's just going to be somethingthat they want you and they
want your design style.
They want to work with you, andso just because you shared some
knowledge with them early inthe process doesn't mean they're
not going to hire you anyway,because the people that are
hiring designers aren't capableor wanting to do it on their own
.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
Yes, Perfect point.
Yes, because we are a luxuryservice.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
You are a luxury service and it is always scary.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
I will say, as an entrepreneur and I have many
friends who are entrepreneursit's like how much do you give
away for free on Instagram?
How much do you give away forfree when people reach out?
Where is the line?
Because you want your serviceto be valuable.
But I think it has become socommonplace that people are
giving a lot of their knowledgefor free.
They're not necessarilyconnecting the dots.
(47:20):
So there's a way to give theknowledge without connecting the
dots, of the entire process oreverything that you need.
You know you're not giving awayevery vendor you would use and
every design tip you have, butthere's a way to give tips about
the process without giving awaythe process that are viewed as
helpful 100%.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
I've seen a couple of situations where plumbers have
put videos out there.
I was in a conference last yearand you know, in most big
conferences and this was one ofthe best conferences I'd ever
been to.
But in the front row, of course, is the VIP, and the main guy
putting the conference on keptcalling out this one plumber.
Well, this plumber was doingthese really funny videos and
(48:05):
talking about here's how you fixthis and here's how you fix
that, and he had built a hugebusiness around these videos
because in the day, even thoughhe was helping people with how
to fix a clogged drain, mostpeople don't want to take the
time to do it themselves becausethere is still some magic in
(48:26):
everything a plumber does, yeah,and to know, okay, yeah, make
sure you do this, this and this.
He's not saying the littletidbits that he knows from
knowledge that he has picked upalong the way, but he is giving
a lot of knowledge and it was ahuge social media opportunity
for him and it was working.
How do you make plumbingexciting?
This guy was doing it.
(48:49):
And I was like okay if theplumber can do it, a designer
can definitely do it.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
We can all do it Exactly.
Yes, yes, oh, that's a greatstory, a great example too.
All right, so before we run outof time, I always like to ask
my guests if they have a bookthat they would recommend, that
they've read, either personallyor professionally, that they
felt impacted their life, thatthey think our audience should
read and I know you read a lot.
We talked about this earlier.
We're both big into continuallearning, so what would you like
(49:16):
to recommend?
Speaker 1 (49:17):
to show.
I want to recommend Worthy.
So Jamie Kern Lima and ifyou're familiar with her, she
started IT Cosmetics and shewrote one book.
But this book actually is aboutself-confidence versus
self-worth and it really divesin and I didn't realize before I
(49:38):
read it that there was adifference.
Oftentimes, when we don't gotackling something like a big
project or an idea, we have alot of times there's something
holding us back because it'sdriven by self-confidence.
But she actually talks about itbeing no, it's not the
self-confidence.
Self-confidence goes up anddown.
It's actually your self-worth.
It's thinking I am worthy ofthis accomplishment, I am worthy
(50:02):
of this path, I'm worthy ofmyself and I'm worthy to be
loved.
And it is a really eye-openingbook and really good and you can
tell I totally like it becauseI have stickies.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
I saw that.
I saw that, I saw that I'm asticky person, I highlight.
Me too.
I highlight, I fold pages down,I write notes on the side.
I do all of that stuff too.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
Bought this book for Christmas for my stepdaughter
and ended up starting to look atit before I mailed it out to
her and I was like I want toread this.
So my husband came in he's likethat was from McKenna and I was
like, yeah, I bought her herown copy.
I'm like I had to read it too,and I'm glad I did, because it
was a very good book and itreally, you know, talks about um
(50:48):
posture syndrome.
It talks about different thingsthat we and especially it talks
to men and women, but mostlywomen, you know just the things
that we do and think of and Iwas like, oh, I could totally
relate to all that and it reallyit was inspiring yeah, it's,
and she has a great story.
Speaker 2 (51:05):
I mean, her story is amazing.
Her story is unbelievable, herstory is like should get
everyone and everyone hope andalso just a reminder, like you
have to believe in what you'redoing and you need to believe in
it more than anyone else,because you will get no's and
you will get people who thinkyou're crazy and who don't
believe in your business ideaand you really have to like, own
(51:26):
it and feel it and live it andwalk it.
And her story is trulyincredible 100%.
Speaker 1 (51:31):
And that resiliency of being told no, no, no, no and
still getting up and doing itagain and over and over because
she believed in our products somuch, it's amazing.
I actually love our products, Iuse a lot of our products, but
it was just.
The story is amazing becausesomebody tells me no that many
times I think I might cry.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
Oh yeah, oh, I would too.
I you know her story.
I'm like I don't know that Iwould have that level of
resilience about it.
But then again, maybe if I hadthat product that is so good,
maybe I would.
I don't know, it's hard to say,but, um, oh, jackie, thank you.
How can our listeners find youif they want more help with
their businesses?
How do they find you?
Speaker 1 (52:07):
So I'm at BehindTheDesignCocom Okay, I'm
all over and I'm like that moston YouTube.
We're on YouTube, we're onLinkedIn and we're still on
Instagram and Pinterest, ofcourse, so you can find me in
any of those, and it's usuallyBehindTheDesign or
BehindTheDesignCo as our work,and that's how you can find me
in any of those, and it'susually behind the design or
behind the design code as ourwork, and that's how you can
reach me.
Speaker 2 (52:27):
Wonderful, and I will put all of that in the show
notes and I will link it all sothat everybody can find you.
Thank you so much.
It was great to meet you and totalk to you, and thank you for
such an incredible education formyself personally and also for
all of my listeners that areentrepreneurs, because there are
a lot of them.
So, thank you so much.
Yeah, thank you, I loved it.
Oh, thank you.
I hope you have a beautiful day.
Thanks, thank you for joining usfor another episode of the
(52:52):
House of Jermar podcast, wherewellness starts within.
We appreciate you being a partof our community and hope you
felt inspired and motivated byour guest.
If you enjoyed this episode,please write us a review and
share it with friends.
Building our reach on YouTubeand Apple Podcasts will help us
get closer to our mission toempower 1 million women to live
(53:14):
all in.
You can also follow us onInstagram at House of Jermar and
sign up to be a part of ourmonthly inspiration newsletter
through our website,houseofjermarcom.
If you or someone you knowwould be a good guest on the
show, please reach out to us atpodcast at houseofgermarcom.
This has been a House of Germarproduction with your host, jean
(53:37):
Collins.
Thank you for joining our house.
We break it out in is this revenue, is this
visibility or client work?
And so those are our threepriorities.
And so when we hold things upto that test, we say, okay, does
this fit within those realms?
Then that also tells us if weneed to work on it and at what
priority level.
Of course, client work isalways going to be over
(00:20):
everybody else.
But revenue constantly havingrevenue in our business and
constantly finding more revenuecoming into our business,
finding more clients, includingretaining existing clients, is
really important.
And then the visibilityVisibility to me is an easy
aspect.
It's not always easy toeverybody, but it's what I know
from my marketing mind, and so Itend to, when I get overwhelmed
(00:42):
, to do the visibility thingsrather than the sales things,
Because that's just naturallywhere my comfort zone is.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Welcome to the House of Germar podcast where wellness
starts within.
The House of Germar is alifestyle brand, empowering
women to live all in throughinterior design and personal
wellness.
We are a destination for womenready to reimagine what is
possible in their homes andlives and then create it.
We are honored to have you joinus on our mission to empower 1
(01:15):
million women to live all in.
I am your host, jean Collins,and I invite you to become
inspired by this week's guest.
Welcome to the House of Germapodcast, where wellness starts
within.
I'm your host, jean Collins,and today's guest is somebody
that I don't know and I just met, but I'm so excited to talk to
(01:35):
her.
Her name is Jackie Green andshe is the founder and the
driving force behind, behind thedesign, and I am so excited
because she helps interiordesigners.
We're going to talk about notjust interior designers, also
small businesses and one of myfavorite exciting new topics
that I don't talk about often onthe podcast.
We are going to talk about AIguys.
So, jackie, welcome to the show.
I'm so excited to have you.
(01:56):
Thank you, I am really excitedto be here.
Oh, thank you.
So, before we get into you andhow you got to what you do.
Let's talk about your businessbehind the design and what does
your agency if agency is thecorrect word to use for you, but
I would kind of put you in thestrategic marketing partnership
realm is probably what you wantto be called.
(02:16):
What do you guys do?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
We originally were born to.
In the sense, this idea thatcame to my mind was to kind of
help educate after college.
So I was teaching at the designschool and thought, okay, how
do we help our designers afterthey get out of college?
And, like running a business,nobody teaches you how to run a
business.
And so it kind of started therein the education realm.
(02:39):
Well then it went to I mean,our clients need a lot more than
just that education part of it.
Let's start offering marketingservices.
And my background was inmarketing before.
I was an interior designer andso I decided, okay, we'll start
offering that.
And then this year we'reactually starting to get into
the AI which we're going to talkabout today.
It's really offering AIconsulting and helping people
(03:01):
really, you know, expand theirbusiness and grow their business
, grow their revenue using AIsolutions.
And so it's kind of become thisall-encompassing solution to
really help small businesses.
And it started in interiordesign, but then we opened up to
architects and design buildsand construction and it's kind
of blossomed from there.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
I love how things just sort of take on new life.
They do, and I've had otherguests who have specialized in
the arts world and they found,oh, they were providing a
service to artists and all of asudden found out, oh, it's not
just artists who need theseservices, it's all entrepreneurs
, and so you will probably findthat's going to happen for you
(03:41):
as well.
It's not just as you're finding, it's not just interior
designers, it's all these othertouch points within that
industry.
But then you can very closelyand quickly make a leap to other
industries as well, which isexciting as a business owner.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
It really is.
It makes it fun, and one of thethings I love about being a
business owner is that every dayis different.
Some days are hard, some daysare good, but at least I'm never
bored.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Never bored, never bored.
So you talked a little bitabout how you got to be a
business owner, but let's dig alittle bit deeper into that.
So what is your background,what's your educational
background and what was the paththat really got you to deciding
I'm going to take that leap andbecome an entrepreneur, because
that is a big leap.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Sure, I originally have a bachelor's in journalism
(04:40):
with a focus in advertising andmarketing.
So when I got out of college Iwent into marketing for a small
business but eventually landedwhere something was, I don't
know.
I just wasn't satisfied.
I guess I just kind of wastired, burned out.
So I decided to do marketingconsulting and I did that for
about seven years and that wasfun.
But I burned out again and I'lltell you why.
(05:01):
One of the biggest challenges Ihad was how do I grow this
beyond myself?
We can talk about that later.
But so I ended up going back toschool and I became an interior
designer.
I worked for three differentarchitecture firms.
I was a commercial interiordesigner.
I was invited back to thecollege I went to for my second
degree and taught there forabout five years.
(05:23):
And that's kind of how Behindthe Design was born is it came
out of all the challenges I sawwithin those architecture firms
of how in corporate America theydo a good job if you ask for it
, in the sense of giving you thedollars to expand your skills.
They either bring programs in,they send you to conferences, or
(05:45):
at least that was my experiencewhen I went into architecture
and in the entire design world.
There was none of that.
There was no support.
You're supposed to have so manycredit hours to extend your
license every year, butcontinuing ed.
But there was.
I had no idea, and so there was.
I saw a real need in there, andso that's when I decided to go
(06:07):
back out on my own and startoffering up services to these
design firms and architecturefirms that needed something
outside of what they werecurrently getting internally.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah, and there's a huge need.
I say to people all the timejust going to interior design
school does not teach you at allhow to run a business.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
It doesn't teach you anything, and it's the same.
Doesn't teach you anything,nothing.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
No marketing, no, no, nothing.
You have to figure that out.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
And I love teaching.
It was really fun.
I love working with thestudents.
But I figured out, like Itaught commercial interior
design, I had those students for30 hours in a semester.
I don't know anybody who canteach their job at 30 hours and
be like, yeah, go ahead, go dothis Right, you're ready to
start on your own?
Go fly.
Yeah.
And at that point they're justdrinking from a fire hose
(06:56):
because a lot of my studentswere taking three to five
classes.
They're just trying to take itall in and you just physically
can't take it all in and we'renot really teaching.
Whether it be design school orarchitecture, whether it be you
know dentists, lawyers, you knowevery type of service base.
We're not teaching you how toactually run a business.
We teach in design school atleast the one I did, and it was
(07:20):
a class I actually created wasaround professional practice,
kind of giving students an ideaof what to expect, how, the
behind the scenes kind of thingof how businesses run.
But it couldn't go into thedetail of but here's how you run
your business.
And so I started using myexpertise and it kind of came
out of me actually helping mycollege age son at the time he
(07:43):
was in college and he would comehome and ask me questions
during his internship and belike, oh, mom, because he got a
marketing internship, Well, howdo I do this?
They want me to do this, and sothat was our dinner
conversations, and I realizedthere was a lot of information
that I had that I knew that Icould share with other people
and help them.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yeah, how do you like being an entrepreneur?
Is it scary?
Speaker 1 (08:06):
It's scary and awesome and scary and I think
I'm a little crazy, and I'mpretty sure that every
entrepreneur is a little crazy.
You have to be crazy to do thisand in the other way, it's also
so exciting that you get up andI get to do this every day and
so even on the days that'sreally hard and I'm again, I'm
(08:30):
pretty sure that I'm a littlenutty, but it's fun.
I like getting up.
I get excited every day of whatcan I do differently, what can
I improve on, how can I help myclients?
You know what's an idea?
Speaker 2 (08:49):
I'm inevitably always waking up thinking of some new
little idea, of going oh, wecould do this, this would be so
much fun, yeah, so how do youreel the ideas in?
Because anyone who's listeningto this, who's an entrepreneur
or thinking of becoming anentrepreneur I personally find
that is one of my biggestchallenges is I have so many I'm
(09:09):
going to put this in air quotes, for people aren't watching
brilliant ideas, at least that Ithink are brilliant and feel
brilliant at the time.
But yet as an entrepreneur, youcan't do everything.
So how do you decide whatyou're going to do?
How do you make that decisionfor?
Speaker 1 (09:22):
yourself.
It's really interesting becausewhat I do is I write it down
because you want to write downthe idea.
Just because now might not bethe right time doesn't mean
never.
It just means right now thismay not be our focus.
I have a whiteboard in myoffice that has our priorities.
Does this fit within ourpriorities?
And if it doesn't fit, thenit's got to go on the back
(09:43):
burner.
If I can slide it in there andit does fit and it goes along
with our goals, then okay, let'sexplore it.
One thing I started doing Ididn't realize I could do,
speaking of AI, is I startedasking chat.
Now I subscribe and have thesubscription to chat, so I have
taught it who I am, what mybrand is, what I offer our
(10:05):
clients.
We have been chatting for along time now, so I feel like
it's a real person and everymorning I'm like good morning
chat.
That's funny.
And so I started giving theseideas and started sharing the
ideas in chat.
I came out this idea chat andhere what do you think?
Can you please go out and dosome research and tell me is
this a viable idea?
What would I need to do to makethis happen?
(10:27):
What are some of the negativesof this and I started kind of my
research there and kind oflooking at it versus starting
with oh, let's just dive rightin, because it at least gave me
at least a starting point ofwhere I needed If this was
really an idea I want to go with.
It gives me an idea of where toactually start and breaks it
(10:50):
down.
And so, like a lot of people, Isuffer from this big idea.
How do I break it down intosmaller pieces?
And as an entrepreneur, likeyou know, we have these great
ideas but we don't necessarilyhave the time, the detail to
really kind of break it down, tomake it into smaller bite
pieces and make it work.
(11:11):
And so that gets me to thestarting point and that's how I
kind of rang in those ideas.
I still throw them in my littlebook and my little notebook and
, yes, I'm still a paper personor a pen.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
I love paper pen.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
But then I go back to them and say, okay, is it time
for this or not time for this?
And then the other part of thattoo, which I've really explored
in the last year, is energy.
Is there energy behind this?
Is this making me excitedinside?
I mean every idea.
When you get a brilliant idea,because they're all brilliant,
you know Of course.
Of course we all get excited.
(11:48):
But am I really excited aboutthis?
Let's sit on this for a momentand just see.
And when I mean a moment, Imean let's sit on it for days,
weeks and kind of feel how doesmy energy relate to how this
works I am not woo-woo at all,I've got to say that to how this
works.
I am not woo-woo at all, I gotto say that.
But working on my energy andunderstanding that inner energy,
(12:08):
that we all are full of energy,has really kind of helped me
settle down and really put theenergy I have into the right
things for the business.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Oh, I love that.
Have you ever done human designand had your chart read?
Speaker 1 (12:22):
I did, I did my chart a while back.
I actually know a woman.
I sat on a board with a womanwho does human design for people
.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
It's actually very interesting and I found, from a
making business decisionperspective, it really helped me
to understand the best way forme to make business decisions,
especially around the new ideasunderstanding how my body
naturally wants to function andthe energy and the way that I
naturally want to decide, versuslike jumping right in the
(12:51):
minute I come up with the idea,which is actually where I tend
to want to go.
But recognizing that, yes, youknow just everything is a great
idea, but you know, having yourpillars, having your, what are
your goals, what do you want tostand for?
What do you want to accomplishthis year?
Trying to stick true to yourbrand I think a lot of
entrepreneurs struggle with thatand I'm sure that's something
(13:13):
that you really help people isto really identify who are you,
because that's the other thingthey don't teach in school at
all anywhere.
It's like really trying toidentify who's your target
audience and who.
Who are you, who's your brand,what's your uniqueness?
Because a lot of people I knowI came out of design school and
I was like I'll design foranyone who has money and it's
like, and it's so true and it'scase in all you want to right
(13:34):
and you want in every business.
You're like I'm an entrepreneur,I'll take money from anyone,
but that's really I don't wantto starve.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
I'm gonna just take this job, even though I know
this guy's a jerk and he's goingto try to undercut me on every
single thing, but I'll take itbecause I need money.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
It's like, no, we need to back up and that's not a
good marketing strategy.
Yes, and a lot of us needpeople like you to help with the
parameters, with the guardrails, to help people identify who
are you, what is your brand,what do you want to focus on?
What are your priorities forthis year?
And you mentioned prioritiesand I think, as we're moving
(14:09):
into a new year, because we'rerecording this in January I
think it's important to writeyour priorities and also be okay
to reevaluate those prioritiessix months into the year,
because they might change.
But you need some sort oflitmus test to evaluate your
ideas against.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Absolutely and we break it out in is this revenue,
is this visibility or clientwork?
And so those are our threepriorities.
And so when we hold things upto that test, we say, okay, does
this fit within those realms?
Then that also tells us if weneed to work on it and at what
priority level.
Of course, client work isalways going to be over
(14:43):
everybody else.
But revenue constantly havingrevenue in our business and
constantly finding more revenuecoming into our business,
finding more clients, includingretaining the existing clients,
is really important.
And then the visibilityVisibility to me is an easy
aspect.
It's not always easy toeverybody, but it's what I know
from my marketing mind, and so Itend to, when I get overwhelmed
(15:05):
, to do the visibility thingsrather than the sales things,
because that's just naturallywhere my comfort zone is.
Of course, you always go towhat's comfortable first.
So when I started breaking itdown, going okay, hold on, am I
doing a visibility thing, whichis the last of the priorities at
this point, versus a revenuething?
I need to work on the revenuebefore I work on the visibility,
(15:26):
and that's really hard to dobecause visibility is more fun.
But back to your point on thebranding and the strategy.
So many business owners,especially ones that are new or
just getting started, don't havea real strong strategy.
They're just kind of throwingspaghetti at a wall, going, okay
, is this going to stick, isthis going to work?
(15:46):
And when we back up and say,okay, what is our strategy, what
is that audience we want toreach, who is that ideal
audience?
But a lot of times we're afraidto go talk to that audience and
actually ask them hey, what doyou want, what do you need?
And that is one of the biggestmistakes we make as
entrepreneurs.
Because I saw a stat the otherday of we know that the stats
(16:09):
show that businesses startups,you know really struggle to stay
in business.
It is a really high stat, butthis statistics and I can't
remember if it was like 62% orsomething of why companies fail
is because nobody actuallywanted their product.
And that's a really importantaspect If you aren't talking to
(16:30):
your audience or that primaryaudience, to know if you're what
you're selling is important tothem.
Just because you think yourclient needs something, it
doesn't mean that they want that, and there's a big difference
of what they need and what theywant.
And so it's important to kindof look at that of saying, okay,
what is our client, what is ourstrategy for hitting that
(16:52):
client?
And you're really stayingfocused on that.
And that is really hard forentrepreneurs, because we do
have these great minds that giveus these great, brilliant ideas
all the time, of course.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yes, yes, well, and you make such an interesting
point because sales comes intothe whole sales adage of give
them what they want but showthem what they need.
And normally, especially ininterior design, it's like, by
the way, you do need this customcoffee table, but you have to
give them what they want first,and then you show them what they
(17:22):
don't realize that they need intheir environment in order to
like, really pull the room alltogether.
Artwork is a perfect example inthe design world.
People will say like I don'treally care about the artwork,
and it's like, oh, but then whenyou design a room and you show
them this amazing piece ofartwork that brings it all
together, you're like, no, youactually need the artwork, you
really do need the artwork.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
You really do.
But when we look at it that wayand think about it okay, you're
absolutely right, let's satisfythat need first and then show
them the extra stuff, thatreally helps bring it all
together.
It does help and it makesselling also easier for us.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
It does.
Yeah, it definitely does.
So let's talk about socialmedia, and you and I hadn't
talked about this in advance,but I would love to pick your
brain about social media.
So how do you help your clientsnavigate the universe of social
media and how they can use thatfor their brands?
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Well, one social media is constantly changing and
we know, just within the lastweek and a half of the new year,
there have been severalannouncements out of Facebook of
how they're changing differentaspects.
There have been severalannouncements out of Facebook of
how they're changing differentaspects.
One thing that was interesting,especially with Facebook, is
that and I knew this was comingand I had kind of done a video
(18:33):
on it talking about this I feellike I no longer see my family
and friends on Facebook.
I only see big brands.
Well, it turns out that theyfinally announced this, I think
in December.
Hey, we're actually going toput your likes before your
family and friends, so whateveryou like or engage with is
(18:54):
actually going to show up inyour feed before the family and
friends, which, for those of uswho have crazy families, that
might be a great thing, but wehave to understand that from a
business standpoint of how weutilize that to the extent.
One thing that's reallyimportant, whether it be
Facebook or Instagram, is thatengagement part is they will
(19:15):
show people content that isengaging, that other people have
engaged with.
So I think the number is like5%.
So if you have a thousandpeople followers and you send
out a post, it's only reallygoing to go to 50 people and
then if those 50 people engagewith that content, then it might
(19:36):
show to another 50 people andthat's an important aspect.
So when we went back andstarted looking at, okay, why
were some things working and whyweren't some things working, it
comes to that engagement part,knowing those algorithms and the
changes that come about.
A regular business owner whohas the entire business to run
does not have the time to knowthose little odysseys and those
(19:58):
little things.
It's not what they absorb intoand want to.
You know, learn aboutconstantly.
We've really been looking atorganic versus paid and honestly
, paid is if you really haveeyes and you really have an
offer, you're going to have tomix pay in there with your
organic.
You can't just get by withorganic anymore.
(20:21):
Unfortunately, it's just notthere.
It doesn't mean you have tospend a lot of money, but it
does mean that you have to startusing that as part of your
strategy.
But that is our job, and how wehelp clients is we know these
things.
This is our job to make surewe're staying on top of this.
Linkedin is one of the biggestopportunities right now,
especially if you're selling B2Bor you're selling B2C, b2b,
(20:46):
being business, business orbusiness consumers.
Even if you have a high levelconsumer, linkedin might still
be where you're at.
Interior design is a perfectexample.
Interior design service is notcheap.
The products that we sell arenot cheap, so we want a client.
Most of our clients areprofessionals.
Well, guess where professionalshang out?
Linkedin before they hang outnecessarily on Facebook or
(21:08):
Instagram?
Yeah, so knowing thatinformation, and then video and
YouTube.
Youtube is just one big, hugesearch engine, that's all it is.
And so, when you look at it,instead of saying this is social
, no, this is a search engine, Iwant to be there.
And video is the fastestgrowing area and we need to be
out there.
And that can be reallyoverwhelming for a lot of people
(21:31):
who aren't comfortable withbeing in front of a camera.
Yeah, with sharing theirknowledge.
I have a client who we weretalking about her social media
strategy.
She had hired us to create thatstrategy, her entire marketing
strategy, and she's like Inoticed that my videos that I'm
just sitting in front of thecamera talking actually get more
(21:52):
engagement and likes than theones that are like high
production and I've really put alot of you know, hired someone
to help me and it's like, yeah,that's because you're being
authentic and people can feelthe difference versus when it's
highly produced.
You know it's highly produced,Okay, but when I can actually
feel who you are and sense whoyou are and that you're being
(22:12):
authentic, that's actually goingto engage people, far before
the overproduced, perfectlooking videos.
And it's just an adjustment.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
And so a lot of those things.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
this is what we do, and so we look at that and test
it and see what's working,what's not working, and try to
help our clients through that.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Love it.
So you give me a great reminder.
I have LinkedIn sort of overhere talking to me in the
background being like youhaven't posted, you haven't
posted, you haven't posted.
I'm like I know.
So I post on all the otherplatforms, but I know I need
especially for what I do, I needto be on LinkedIn more often.
So thank you for that reminder.
Let's talk about AI with socialmedia.
So how are you leveraging AI tohelp your clients come up with
(22:54):
even things like content ideas?
Because that is what so manypeople struggle with is what do
I talk about, and does anybodyactually really care?
Speaker 1 (23:04):
That is so true.
When I first started using AI,I started using chat early in
2023.
So not too far after it startedbecoming a big thing.
I felt like I was cheating, soI would plug in there and you
and I kind of talked about thisbefore I would.
Literally it would tell mehere's 10 ideas that you can go
with with this idea, and I felthorrible.
(23:26):
I felt like I was the biggestcheater on the face of the earth
and I love writing and thathere it is.
It's writing my headline for meand it's better than what I
produced.
So, it took me a little while toshift my brain and go.
Wait a minute, hold on, I haveway too much to do, but that's
the truth of the matter.
I have these ideas.
I know where I want to takethis company.
It is not moving fast enough.
(23:48):
I don't know if it ever willmove fast enough for my own
drive and inner drive that Ihave.
Why am I not using AI to help mewith these things?
And so that's when I reallystarted digging into it and I
ended up getting asked to go toa design build firm and talk to
them about how AI could helpthem.
Because I'd written a fewarticles and somebody an old
(24:09):
student of mine had read thearticle, took it to the owner
and said we need to have her in,and I started looking at how
the different AI programs couldreally help in different areas
of that company.
So Design Build is a companythat does both the interior
design, architecture design, aswell as the construction part of
it, and so for each departmentand there were five, basically I
(24:33):
looked at okay, here's AIsolutions that can help you with
all these I realized that Icould help other small
businesses with the same thingwhen we look at AI and, yes,
there is a negative annotationabout AI that, oh, it's going to
take over the world.
We're all going to lose ourjobs.
No, it still needs that humorand interaction.
You still have to train it.
You still have to use theinformation.
(24:55):
I think, instead, it's going tomake us smarter, it's going to
make us more productive.
I think it's going to also helpus more efficient and be able
to better serve our clients, andso when we really start looking
at it from that standpoint,it's like, okay, well, if I can
cheat, where am I going to cheatat?
So, whether it be accountinglike QuickBooks, I was looking
(25:20):
at the QuickBooks AI solution.
I've used QuickBooks for years,but now there's a little AI
tool that you just put in theinvoice that you paid or the
receipt that you have, throw itin there, and it auto auto
populates.
So I don't have to go in andtype all of that.
Wow, I still have to confirm it, yes, but it's all.
It'll actually read it for meand type that in and put it
(25:43):
where it's supposed to be nowthat is so much more helpful
than me sitting there typingthis of going, okay, I bought
this on one one, I paid with itor with this.
This is da, da, da da.
Here's why it was what thething?
It's saving time.
So something that simple isreally can really help your
business and help you be moreproductive, and I really believe
(26:04):
, for small to medium businesses, that this is a huge game
changer, that you can get moredone with the help of AI.
You just need to figure out andthat's where we started
offering this AI consultingservice because we wanted to
help companies going in thereand looking at what systems do
you currently have that arereally causing you problems.
(26:25):
So, whether you've formallywritten down the systems that
you currently run your business,there are still systems there,
and so what we do is we help youkind of go through all your
systems when are theefficiencies, where are the
inefficiencies?
Where can AI help you andfigure out the right products
for you and build that strategyand help train your employees?
(26:46):
Because that's really what'simportant is how can I use this
to cheat?
Speaker 2 (26:52):
And looking at it, it's like you're cheating, but
at the same time, you're reallyjust making yourself more
efficient, because, no matterhow you use AI, every time I've
used it it might spit somethingout for me, but I'm never
leaving it as it is.
It's sort of like oh wow, I hadto write a letter, or oh wow, I
had to develop a process and Ineed sort of like some
standardized form, and it's likeyou know what it did, like 80%
(27:14):
of the legwork for me and, toyour point, as it starts to get
to know you more and more, itcan write in a way that sounds
more like you.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Yeah, absolutely, and you can teach it your brand,
you can teach it the audienceyou want to reach, but you're
100%, it still needs that humaninteraction.
Anything that comes out ofthere, we're still looking at it
, going, okay, this isn't quiteright.
This needs to be changed thisway.
But a lot of times, what itdoes come up with is things that
I forgot.
So often maybe you're putting aproposal together and I've done
(27:45):
this before.
I'm writing a proposal for aclient and I'm writing out
everything that I believe shouldbe in that proposal.
I have thrown my proposal intochat, gpt and said, hey, what am
I missing?
You know, these are the thingsthey're wanting.
This is the problem I'm having.
What am I missing?
And then it will come back andsay, hey, what about this?
(28:05):
I'm like, oh, I should havewritten that in.
That's totally.
I should have pointed that outin the proposal, because you
want your proposal as thoroughas you possibly can.
Another proposal because youwant your proposal as thorough
as you possibly can.
Another tool that we use iscalled Otter AI and it's a tool
that basically records your Zoomcalls.
So if you're meeting with aclient, say it's a prospect,
(28:26):
otter AI will listen in, willtake notes for you and then
shoot out and give you.
Here were the action items forthat meeting.
No, it doesn't.
It's not perfect.
There might be something inthere going well that we did
discuss that, but that isn't apriority or that's not an action
item.
But it's a lot better than mesitting down after the meeting,
spending a half hour going okay,what were my notes on that?
(28:46):
What did they say here?
What was I doing here?
It works and it's not thatexpensive.
And to me, to make sure thatwe're getting recapping that
customer experience and thensending to the customer that
recap, now I'm going to changeit.
I do change it into my ownwords.
Yes, my own format.
But say hey, here's a recap ofthe meeting.
(29:06):
Do you agree with all theseto-dos?
Are we all set?
You are confirming with theclient that you are listening to
them.
They're also getting thatfeeling of oh wow, somebody's
actually listening to me, we'removing in the right direction
and we're going there in anefficient way.
That's a great use of a tool.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
What I find is really cool about that tool is you are
not focused on having to takenotes on the entire conversation
, and so it allows you, as abusiness owner and as an
entrepreneur, to really beengaged with your client and
listen to them, and listen towhat they're saying and have
them really listen to you,because they don't have to be
(29:44):
taking notes either.
And so when you say to them,I'm recording this, it's going
to be taking notes, I'm going tosend you back a summary, and
it's like, oh wow, I don't haveto be trying to multitask, I can
just be engaged in theconversation, and I find the
conversations are then so muchmore productive as a result.
So it's like you have a muchmore productive conversation
(30:05):
with your client and much moreproductive follow through.
That all happens so much faster, and you've cut hours out of
that whole dialogue process byusing AI.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Yeah, you really have cut hours out, and I think
there are tools or I know thereare tools in all different
aspects of business that we can.
Now I do believe that right now, we're seeing this crazy number
of AI solutions coming out.
I think the last time I heard,there were over 1600 solutions.
There's no way anybody can knowall those solutions and kind of
(30:37):
evaluate them for your business.
Nor should you, and I thinkwe're going to see similar.
For those who are old enough toremember the dot-com era, where,
when internet really came outand websites are coming out and
the dot-com made all thesedifferent services and not all
of them were really viable andweren't really set up to make
money.
They weren't sure how to makemoney yet at that point.
(31:00):
And I think AI is going to bethe same way.
We're going to see some ofthese programs kind of merge
together.
We're going to see some improve, we're going to see some go
away, and so it really is kindof a test of trial and error.
Okay, let's try this app orthis software and see, okay,
does this help me?
How does this fit within mysystem?
(31:21):
Is this going to work?
And so I think we have to alsobe smart about it and what is
realistic and what is that goingto look like?
But I think that we're going tosee this huge change and I feel
like if small businesses don'tget on board, they're really
going to lose out.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Yeah, because there's a lot that can help you with
your marketing materials, somany different things.
And I use Claude a lot.
I had someone introduce me toClaude.
I was using chat and I hadsomeone introduce me to Claude
for a different reason forspeech writing and it was really
helpful and just it has alittle bit different spin.
It's not as great.
(32:02):
I have found it's not as greatif I want, like, hooks for
social media you know, chatgptis like owning the hooks for
social media for sure, right,but it's been really helpful in
coming up with titles to things,summarizing speeches for me,
summarizing things I've written,and so I've used it a lot Like
here give me an outline ofsomething I've written, help me
understand which points shouldrequire a presentation slide and
(32:25):
which points should not, andthings like that, so you don't
have to think quite as muchabout so much of it.
It just gives you a startingpoint and sometimes it points
out things that, to your point,I don't see or I don't think of
and I'm like, oh, wow, that'sgood, I like that.
I'm going to twist that alittle, but I would have never
thought of that.
So it's brilliant.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Yeah, and that's awesome, and I'm still going to
try that out.
By the way, yeah, another toolis Perplexity.
Perplexity does research foryou.
Ooh, yes, and I've played withthat a lot and it is really
helping me find.
I want stats so I might write ablog article about, for
instance, I wrote one about SMSmarketing the other day which
(33:05):
text messaging and how we'reusing text messaging and is that
working for people?
Because I don't know about you,but we're all getting kind of
bombarded now with textmessaging from different brands.
And so I started looking at theresearch.
While I went into perplexity andsaid, hey, I want to research
this, this is what I'm lookingfor, and it started giving me it
would go out there and searchand look for those stats, and
(33:28):
that's what I really needed Now.
At first it came out with somestats that I was like that
doesn't sound quite right, thatseems awfully low, or that you
know.
So I went back to it and it'slike, okay, let me dig further.
And it came up some more things.
And so, just from a researchstandpoint, I remember when it
was such a big deal, when Googleactually was kind of new and
you can go out there and readdifferent.
(33:48):
You know articles and researchto help you improve your
marketing.
Well, now I can actually havethis perplexity, go out and do
it for me, and then I take thatinformation, use it within my
own writing, within my ownspeeches, whatever that is, and
that really has saved me a lotof time, saves so much time.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
I just wrote that down.
I was like, oh, I have to lookinto that one, because I've used
chat to do that and I've triedusing cloud to do that as well
Not as effectively.
Cloud's not good at that.
But I've also felt like youcan't just Google that anymore.
It doesn't work, like what youmight want might be on page 12
and we're never going to page 12.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
You're going to get bored before then and I think
that AI is taking over.
I was talking to.
I have a marketing manager, itworks for me and we were kind of
discussing this whole idea ofhow it's taking over search and
how search is going to have tochange.
So many people are now going tochat or going to some of these
other AIs and saying co-pilotsanother one and asking the
(34:46):
question there before they go toactual Google search and so how
we adjust and how we ask thosequestions are going to change.
I have a great example of that.
We were in San Diego last yearfor an event, for a conference,
(35:07):
and I wanted restaurants inwalking distance of the
convention center for lunch thatwere a medium price range,
medium to low price range.
It was lunch and I put mylittle criteria into Google and
I got Fleming's Del Frisco's Imean all these Morton's, all
these big and they weren't evenopen for lunch and I'm like why
don't you work like chat, whereI can put all my criteria and
(35:30):
you give me the right answer?
And I think that's where we'regoing to see that shift.
We're going to see people makeit's just going to happen.
And I know it's scary.
Everything is always scary whenyou're at the forefront of it.
But it's going to happen and itcan improve our lives if we go
after this with an ethical eye.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Yeah Well, and AI in the design world.
I think there's just so manycool things that can be
happening from a renderingperspective, from a 3D
perspective, from a helpingconsumers experience.
Like some of the technology, Ipersonally haven't been using it
, but I've seen it that otherdesigners at larger firms have
been using and it is really cool.
And it's like what if I justyou know what, if, instead of
(36:12):
making the sofa red, we want tomake it blue, and I want to make
it different, and I don't wantit to be that style and I want
the arms to be like this, andall of a sudden you put that in
and it's like bing bang, boom,it's changed your room right
there.
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
So cool.
It's so cool and when you'resitting in front of a client or
residential and you're talkingto them and you're just trying
to figure out what style theylike, because, remember your
clients, as an interior designer, they don't always know the
different styles like you do.
That's why they're hiring you.
But if you could take a pictureof their room and apply
different styles, just to kindof give an idea and say, hey, is
(36:46):
this something you might like?
Or what do you like about this,what do you not like about this
?
And start changing it and atleast do the schematic design
part, just kind of getting thoseideas before you really get
into design development, beforeyou even leave their house.
How amazing is that you havesaved yourself so many hours of
going back and forth with yourclient and go.
(37:06):
Well, I don't really like blues.
Well, they never told you thatin the first place?
It's like, why didn't you tellme that three meetings ago?
I don't know, I forgot.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
And so you really start.
You can.
It can really save you sometime.
Now that doesn't take away fromwhat you bring to the table,
that you were an amazingdesigner and you're going to put
all the pieces together Correct.
At least get you quicker tothat point where you're actually
doing the design development.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Yes, it gets some of the grunt work done.
That can take hours, quitehonestly hours and a Pinterest
board and walking them throughand listening to their feedback
and trying to understand theirstyle.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
It's all very time consuming it really is, and I
think those details that youmight be able to kind of get out
of them more quickly is reallygoing to help you, because
interior design people forgetthis is a very, very detailed
profession.
You have to know all the littlethings and I think there's a
(38:04):
place there for AI to reallyhelp in that area.
I agree, I agree.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
So let's talk quickly about email marketing.
If you would Sure, how are youleveraging email marketing for
your clients?
Because I see a lot onlineabout people saying, because of
the unpredictability of socialmedia, everyone who thinks they
have a marketing strategy inevery small business needs to
really invest in email marketing.
So I would love your point ofview of that.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Sure, and I totally agree with that.
Social media is unpredictable.
It really is, and it isconstantly changing and has been
constantly changing.
You cannot rely on it.
The other thing you have toknow about social media is that
you don't own your followers.
That algorithm changes.
Your followers are gone.
We actually got hacked onFacebook in October and we're
(38:49):
still being punished.
We still can't get it back onFacebook.
We lost our group, we lost ourcompany page, I lost my personal
page.
Just done.
That entire platform is gonefor us and it will be gone for
some time, because whoeverhacked it ended up putting
content out there, and so, eventhough I have physically talked
to them about hey, this wasn'tus, you can clearly see that it
(39:09):
wasn't us.
We reported the hacking Too bad, nothing we can do about it.
And so, all of a sudden, anentire channel for us blew up,
and so we really had to look atthat and go, okay, well, what's
what?
Speaker 2 (39:25):
It's a small business , that's painful.
You're like those are myfollowers, that's like my
potential future revenue.
Yeah it just disappeared.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
And so, when we look at it that way, it really came
to light.
Yeah, I was preaching this andsaying, hey, you need to bring
them on to your own email listand we have been doing that,
luckily.
But it really made a lot ofsense Poof gone, done nothing
there, Can't advertise, can't doanything on there, and we're
(39:59):
still.
I just checked before I got onhere because I wanted to see if
that was still the case.
And we're still being punished.
So, when we look at that, youremail list is literally your
gold mine because there arepeople on there and, yeah, it's
really easy to go.
Well, I sent out these emailsand like my open rates really
like 5% or 10%, whatever it is,yeah, but that might be the 5%
or 10% that you can bring inright now that need your product
at this very moment.
(40:19):
It gives you an opportunity toconstantly be serving your
clients.
It gives you an opportunity orprospects.
It gives you an opportunity andthis is a perfect example in
the interior design world,because I have so many designers
that don't realize themagnitude of having a lead
magnet and building that emaillist.
What happens is somebody comesto your site.
They see your picture in amagazine or see something about
(40:43):
you on one of the social andthey go to your website.
And the website is still yourfoundation.
We still need to be creatingthat website.
They look at you and they'relike, oh man, I really want to
hire her.
She's beautiful or he has thisgreat style I love.
But then they forget.
Life goes on, and so when youhave a lead magnet and you give
(41:03):
them something of educationmaybe it's 10 tips for
decorating during the holidaysor 10 tips on decluttering,
whatever it is they get on youremail list because they want
that free educational piece.
You're sharing just a littlebit of your process.
You have them in the hopper sothat when you start talking to
(41:25):
them and continuously givingthem more and more content, then
of course you're staying on topof mind with them.
Even if they're not opening it,even if they're not ready,
they're seeing it in their inboxand it's still triggering.
When I'm ready for that project, I know I'm going to hire her
or I'm going to hire him, and soit's really a huge avenue that
we really need to focus on.
(41:45):
And how you use your email listis so important and you can do
A-B testing.
A-b testing is where maybe youtest a different headline on a
landing page or on an email.
We test one thing at a time butgive my little disclaimers.
But there's so much we can do.
We can segment the market, youcan identify.
(42:06):
Well, okay, if these peopleasked for this lead magnet, then
I know they might be interestedin this new service that we're
offering.
Let's start marketing to them.
There is so much that you cando and you own that.
It's not like social, whereit'll go away in an instant or
it changes and you're not beingseen.
You actually want to bring theminto your own world.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Well and one thing I would think you could really
help your clients with is we allfeel like, okay, a lead magnet.
I read about this all the timeand I'm terrible at this.
I do now give stuff away, butit took a long time, and I don't
even necessarily give away theright stuff either, because one
of the things I think westruggle with as entrepreneurs
is like our brain only has thecapacity to think of so many
(42:50):
things, and so I hear all thetime you have to have a lead
magnet and I'm like, okay, butwhat is my lead magnet?
What are my subjects, whatwould be interesting?
And as I'm talking to you, I'msort of like, huh, once again,
maybe that's an interestingplace to go to AI and to go to
an agency like you to be like,hey, help me develop an email
(43:12):
marketing strategy so that I amcreating content in a lead
magnet that will actually stick,that people actually care about
.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
And that's exactly what I was going to say Just ask
AI.
It's not just ask AI.
You can ask your customers hey,what can I help you with this?
You can do one of the thingsthat as much as I as an interior
designer.
A few years back it's beenquite a few years, but we redid
our kitchen, yeah, and theconstruction experience was so
(43:44):
hard on us.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
It's so terrible.
Oh it's terrible.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
It's terrible.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Terrible.
People have no idea until theydo it, and I knew this.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
It's real easy.
When you're going to a job sitein somebody else's home, it's a
totally different thing.
When you're cooking on a hotplate upstairs, outside your
bedroom, and you're cleaningdishes in your bathroom, it is a
totally different experience.
It is a totally differentexperience.
So if that's a pain point foryour clients while they're
working with you, that might be.
(44:09):
Hey, here are tips on how toovercome the challenges of
construction, or it might be.
This is what to expect whileyou're in construction.
Eating out all the time washorrible.
I eventually got so tired ofeating out and missed my home
cooked food and we don't thinkabout that and as designers,
we're just like yeah, your housecan be torn up for a month.
Well, a month is always atleast six weeks, if not two
(44:32):
months, if not two months,exactly, yep, yeah, I was one of
those people.
I had everything ordered,everything was in the garage.
We were ready just to installblah, blah, blah.
Of course, everything's broken.
There was this, this wasforgotten, or this didn't get
ordered, or whatever.
There was always something.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
There's always something and it's all a process
.
There are steps.
It's like I can't give youwater back until everything is
finished and they can installthe counters, and that is like
really, at the end, it really is.
It really is at the end, and soit's like you cannot get water,
even though your dishwasher'sthere.
You cannot get water to usethat until your countersend.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
Yeah, and you know it's looking at the pain points
of what your audience isexperiencing.
That's where your lead magnetcomes out of what can you help
your clients with that is goingto eventually have them help
their lives.
But also remember you when it'stime they want to hire somebody
and I know a lot of designerstend to be this way a lot where
(45:32):
I don't want to share my secrets.
First of all, it's not a goodmindset, it's a scarcity mindset
and we want to approach things.
It goes back to that wholeenergy.
If there is plenty to go aroundand there's plenty of
opportunities, right, and so wewant to kind of get out of that
scarcity.
When we share our knowledge, itcomes back twofold.
(45:54):
When we help other people, itwill come back.
So whether you're giving thistool or this knowledge to
somebody, it could be them, itcould be their sister, their
sister-in-law, their brother, afriend, somebody else they're
referring to.
You might get five clients justas a result of helping that one
person that you didn'tnecessarily charge.
(46:14):
But it comes back to you.
There are opportunities there,and so to be afraid to share
that?
No, you're just kind ofbringing them into your world
and I guarantee for the people,especially in design the people
that are hiring you are hiringyou for you and for what you
(46:36):
have to offer them.
It's not anything else.
It's just going to be somethingthat they want you and they
want your design style.
They want to work with you, andso just because you shared some
knowledge with them early inthe process doesn't mean they're
not going to hire you anyway,because the people that are
hiring designers aren't capableor wanting to do it on their own
.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
Yes, Perfect point.
Yes, because we are a luxuryservice.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
You are a luxury service and it is always scary.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
I will say, as an entrepreneur and I have many
friends who are entrepreneursit's like how much do you give
away for free on Instagram?
How much do you give away forfree when people reach out?
Where is the line?
Because you want your serviceto be valuable.
But I think it has become socommonplace that people are
giving a lot of their knowledgefor free.
They're not necessarilyconnecting the dots.
(47:20):
So there's a way to give theknowledge without connecting the
dots, of the entire process oreverything that you need.
You know you're not giving awayevery vendor you would use and
every design tip you have, butthere's a way to give tips about
the process without giving awaythe process that are viewed as
helpful 100%.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
I've seen a couple of situations where plumbers have
put videos out there.
I was in a conference last yearand you know, in most big
conferences and this was one ofthe best conferences I'd ever
been to.
But in the front row, of course, is the VIP, and the main guy
putting the conference on keptcalling out this one plumber.
Well, this plumber was doingthese really funny videos and
(48:05):
talking about here's how you fixthis and here's how you fix
that, and he had built a hugebusiness around these videos
because in the day, even thoughhe was helping people with how
to fix a clogged drain, mostpeople don't want to take the
time to do it themselves becausethere is still some magic in
(48:26):
everything a plumber does, yeah,and to know, okay, yeah, make
sure you do this, this and this.
He's not saying the littletidbits that he knows from
knowledge that he has picked upalong the way, but he is giving
a lot of knowledge and it was ahuge social media opportunity
for him and it was working.
How do you make plumbingexciting?
This guy was doing it.
(48:49):
And I was like okay if theplumber can do it, a designer
can definitely do it.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
We can all do it Exactly.
Yes, yes, oh, that's a greatstory, a great example too.
All right, so before we run outof time, I always like to ask
my guests if they have a bookthat they would recommend, that
they've read, either personallyor professionally, that they
felt impacted their life, thatthey think our audience should
read and I know you read a lot.
We talked about this earlier.
We're both big into continuallearning, so what would you like
(49:16):
to recommend?
Speaker 1 (49:17):
to show.
I want to recommend Worthy.
So Jamie Kern Lima and ifyou're familiar with her, she
started IT Cosmetics and shewrote one book.
But this book actually is aboutself-confidence versus
self-worth and it really divesin and I didn't realize before I
(49:38):
read it that there was adifference.
Oftentimes, when we don't gotackling something like a big
project or an idea, we have alot of times there's something
holding us back because it'sdriven by self-confidence.
But she actually talks about itbeing no, it's not the
self-confidence.
Self-confidence goes up anddown.
It's actually your self-worth.
It's thinking I am worthy ofthis accomplishment, I am worthy
(50:02):
of this path, I'm worthy ofmyself and I'm worthy to be
loved.
And it is a really eye-openingbook and really good and you can
tell I totally like it becauseI have stickies.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
I saw that.
I saw that, I saw that I'm asticky person, I highlight.
Me too.
I highlight, I fold pages down,I write notes on the side.
I do all of that stuff too.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
Bought this book for Christmas for my stepdaughter
and ended up starting to look atit before I mailed it out to
her and I was like I want toread this.
So my husband came in he's likethat was from McKenna and I was
like, yeah, I bought her herown copy.
I'm like I had to read it too,and I'm glad I did, because it
was a very good book and itreally, you know, talks about um
(50:48):
posture syndrome.
It talks about different thingsthat we and especially it talks
to men and women, but mostlywomen, you know just the things
that we do and think of and Iwas like, oh, I could totally
relate to all that and it reallyit was inspiring yeah, it's,
and she has a great story.
Speaker 2 (51:05):
I mean, her story is amazing.
Her story is unbelievable, herstory is like should get
everyone and everyone hope andalso just a reminder, like you
have to believe in what you'redoing and you need to believe in
it more than anyone else,because you will get no's and
you will get people who thinkyou're crazy and who don't
believe in your business ideaand you really have to like, own
(51:26):
it and feel it and live it andwalk it.
And her story is trulyincredible 100%.
Speaker 1 (51:31):
And that resiliency of being told no, no, no, no and
still getting up and doing itagain and over and over because
she believed in our products somuch, it's amazing.
I actually love our products, Iuse a lot of our products, but
it was just.
The story is amazing becausesomebody tells me no that many
times I think I might cry.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
Oh yeah, oh, I would too.
I you know her story.
I'm like I don't know that Iwould have that level of
resilience about it.
But then again, maybe if I hadthat product that is so good,
maybe I would.
I don't know, it's hard to say,but, um, oh, jackie, thank you.
How can our listeners find youif they want more help with
their businesses?
How do they find you?
Speaker 1 (52:07):
So I'm at BehindTheDesignCocom Okay, I'm
all over and I'm like that moston YouTube.
We're on YouTube, we're onLinkedIn and we're still on
Instagram and Pinterest, ofcourse, so you can find me in
any of those, and it's usuallyBehindTheDesign or
BehindTheDesignCo as our work,and that's how you can find me
in any of those, and it'susually behind the design or
behind the design code as ourwork, and that's how you can
reach me.
Speaker 2 (52:27):
Wonderful, and I will put all of that in the show
notes and I will link it all sothat everybody can find you.
Thank you so much.
It was great to meet you and totalk to you, and thank you for
such an incredible education formyself personally and also for
all of my listeners that areentrepreneurs, because there are
a lot of them.
So, thank you so much.
Yeah, thank you, I loved it.
Oh, thank you.
I hope you have a beautiful day.
Thanks, thank you for joining usfor another episode of the
(52:52):
House of Jermar podcast, wherewellness starts within.
We appreciate you being a partof our community and hope you
felt inspired and motivated byour guest.
If you enjoyed this episode,please write us a review and
share it with friends.
Building our reach on YouTubeand Apple Podcasts will help us
get closer to our mission toempower 1 million women to live
(53:14):
all in.
You can also follow us onInstagram at House of Jermar and
sign up to be a part of ourmonthly inspiration newsletter
through our website,houseofjermarcom.
If you or someone you knowwould be a good guest on the
show, please reach out to us atpodcast at houseofgermarcom.
This has been a House of Germarproduction with your host, jean
(53:37):
Collins.
Thank you for joining our house.
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