Transcript
Sigrun:
You're listening to the SIGRUN Show, episode number 403. In this episode I talk to Tobi Fairley about how to overcome the starving artist syndrome and make money as a creative.
Welcome to SIGRUN Show. I'm your host Sigrun, creator of SOMBA, the MBA program for online entrepreneurs. With each episode I'll share with you inspiring case studies and interviews to help you achieve your dreams and turn your passion into profits. Thank you for spending time with me today.
Building an online business takes time. I share with you proven strategies to help you get there faster. You'll also learn how to master your mindset, uplevel your marketing, and succeed with masterminds. Today I speak with Tobi Fairley who is an award winning interior designer, coach, and entrepreneur running two seven figure businesses. Her mission is to empower creative women to believe in their ideas and charge their worth. Tobi has been featured on television and in the Wall Street Journal and the Huffington Post. In this episode, we talk about how to overcome the starving artist syndrome and make money as a creative.
Before we dive in, let me remind you that this is your last chance to sign up for SIGRUN Life. For the first time, I'm opening up my annual event to anyone who is not in SOMBA, Momentum, or one of my Mastermind programs. They event will take place online this week on Friday and Saturday, October 23rd and 24th. Don't miss out on making new and deep connections, Masterminding with like-minded entrepreneurs, and getting the inspiration to think big and take action. We also have amazing speakers lined up for you to make this the most inspiring and unforgettable online business event of the year. Go to the show notes at sig.com/403, where you can find the link to sign up for a SIGRUN Life plus all the links to Tobi Fairley.
I am so excited to be here with Tobi Fairley, and I was recently on her show and she is now at my show, and I love the topic that we have chosen to talk about. And I know it's so needed. Thank you for coming on the show Tobi.
Tobi Fairley:
Oh, I'm so excited to be here. We have so much in common, so it's just such a pleasure to talk with you.
Sigrun:
We could talk all day about female empowerment and how women need to step up and make money. And I'm sure we're going to touch on that as well, but I love that you actually call yourself a creative and then you focus on helping creative people. And it's often this thinking that creative people can't make money or not in the same way or you have to be a business coach or a marketing coach to make money online. And I'm on a mission to debunk that myth and I'm so glad we're going to dive into that as a topic of this episode. But before, I would love to hear about your story, how you came to do what you do today.
Tobi Fairley:
Okay. So it's interesting that I'm not just a creative. I'm a left brain and a right brain person. So I have an interior design degree, but I also have a degree in accounting and an MBA. This has served me so well and it's very unique to the creative industries. And so I have been an interior designer for 20 years. I've done amazing luxury projects. I've been published on magazines, all the fun stuff. I have product lines for national companies. So I've really done all the things in the design industry that I really dreamed of, but really some of my favorite work is working with creatives.
So back in the 2008, 2009 recession when I was seeing the interior design business slow down, I was thinking, what can I do? What is it that people always want from me? And I realized that they really wanted to just kind of look over my shoulder. They wanted to know how I had built my brand and how I'd been published and how I'd grown my social media and how I ran my business and how I made a profit. So I started something back then called Design Camp and people came for weekends for seminars and sessions of Design Camp and I really grew that into an entire consulting business where I now have an online program and do all kinds of fun things. I have a lot of exciting stuff coming this year. I think I'm going to re-introduce a high end Mastermind. So I've worked with creatives in every way, from meeting them where they are online to one-on-one sessions, and it's truly my favorite work to empower these amazing people, especially creative women, to step into their personal power and believe in their ideas and charge their worth. And it's just incredible work. My very favorite. So I love to transform a house, but I especially love to transform someone's business with them because it makes such a difference in their life in every single way.
Sigrun:
How do you think you were able to create such a good business for yourself as an interior designer? Were there certain things like, okay, you mentioned left brain and right brain, which is helpful, but was there anything else on your way that you realized well, I am particularly good also at this marketing side or business side, which is helping you actually build a proper interior design business?
Tobi Fairley:
Yes to all of that. For sure I'm really comfortable in the marketing piece and pitching myself. But what I learned early on is you don't have to be right brained and left brain. It's not like all of the creatives who were like, oh okay, well that's not me can just check out right now because what I really learned is that all of it takes intentional practice and really making decisions to put this kind of work, like business work or marketing work, into your firm. And so a lot of people, I think that are creatives, just think I'm not good at finances, I'm not good at marketing, and their approach is if I just am good enough at my craft, then eventually somebody will find me and I'll suddenly be discovered and then I'll start making money. And that's not true at all.
So I made all the same failures even though I had all this business degree and I was good at pitching myself. I still failed. I still was in debt. I still was seeing that the business model of interior design was really broken because I was making really minimal profit margins and things. And I didn't have to have an accounting degree to see that the numbers weren't adding up. But what I did do, I think, that's different than a lot of people, is I believed I could take charge of all of this stuff. I believed I could really learn how to run a sound financial company. I believed I could learn marketing and then digital marketing. And so it's really more in the mindset piece than anything else, I think the difference is. And I think so many creatives have this ability, they just don't believe they do. They think it's scary or hard or boring and like you, I'm on a mission to debunk all of that, to simplify things for people and to help them believe in themselves. I say to my audience and my tribe and my membership, I believe in you before you even believe in yourself because I absolutely know what you're capable of.
Sigrun:
Yeah. So the starving artist myth, how can we debunk that one?
Tobi Fairley:
Yeah. So that one's really interesting. And what I think it really is a lot of times, is just an excuse, a reason, a limiting belief to stay planted in your comfort zone, right? Because the reason for the starving artist syndrome is a lot of thinking that's sort of like, am I really worth this amount of money, how could I possibly put a price tag on my own value. It feels really salesy or arrogant or self-serving in some way. And I mean the intention is kind, it's like, oh, I don't want to be that person who's overcharging, but it's really just an excuse to continue to undercharge and undervalue.
And it's uncomfortable, right, to charge big fees. And it's uncomfortable to say, this is what I'm worth and then to do the work to make sure that what you're putting out in the world really is worth that. So I think the way we get around it is to change our own mindset. But we think it's the world that has to change. We think, well the clients don't value us or they won't pay these prices and it's really the opposite.
There's a book I read years ago the book's kind of boring, but there's one part that so resonated with me. It's a book called Value-Based Fees by a guy named Alan Weiss. And I'll never forget reading a sentence that said the consultant, meaning the artist or whoever's selling something, the consultant's price is not dictated by the client's willingness to pay, but rather is commiserate with the consultants own low self-esteem. And I would absolutely agree that we are the only people holding back our pricing and our value and really the success of our business.
Sigrun:
So what if somebody is listening and they consider themselves to be a true artist. We're talking about someone that sits down and paints a picture, like the-
Tobi Fairley:
Yes.
Sigrun:
Yeah. That's the picture of an artist that I get into my head and they're like, well, nobody knows that I exist. If I find someone to buy, I have to put really low price. But how do they get out of that dilemma of being in their cave and just creating art and not going out there and actually selling it?
Tobi Fairley:
Yeah. They have to take responsibility for their destiny. And so again, it's so easy to believe that a true artist does upforce their success. They just wait to be discovered again and if my work's good enough, people will find me. Sort of if I build it, they will come mentality, which you and I know never ever ever works. So if you're an artist and it's your hobby, which a lot of people think they have a business, but it's really a hobby, or as I call it a jobby, then you're probably not taking charge of the business side. And I tell people every day it is almost more important to work on your business than work in your business. You have to be the CEO of your business and your life essentially. And so you can't delegate that, at least right off the bat, to anybody else. You have to be invested in getting yourself seen and heard and known.
And it's never been a better time ever to be able to do this, right? We have social media, we have things like what we're talking about, podcasts and videos and YouTube. There is zero excuse to not show up and tell the world about you and who you are and what you do. And people love to buy things from people, right? They love to be invested in your story. There's no excuse not to be telling our story and talking about our work other than it's uncomfortable. And it is at first, but it's also the gateway, the path, to everything you're dreaming of that you're not currently getting. So you have to make it happen. And it's not going to feel fun at first and you're going to believe a lot of stuff like I'm not good at this and I'm not good at public speaking and I'm not good with money. And all of that is personal work you have to do, money mindset work, practicing putting yourself out there even though it feels terrifying so that you take charge of your destiny, you take charge of your pricing. Yeah. It's all us just like that alan Weiss quote said. It's our own beliefs about ourself, our low self-esteem.
Sigrun:
So what would be the steps for someone that is in a position, whether they are a graphic designer, interior designer, the artist, painter, sculptor, what is the next step for them to say, okay, I'm willing to follow Tobi's advice, what do I do next?
Tobi Fairley:
Okay. So I think there's a few parts. It's definitely on the marketing side, for sure. So there's the social media marketing and being consistent. Here's what I find a lot of creatives do. We can get all excited about a plan and oh yeah, I'm going to do this, I'm going to show up on social, I'm going to build a digital marketing strategy, which they might not even call it that. They're like, I'm going to start talking to people online. I'm willing to learn how to email them. So many creatives don't even have a list, so there's some learning there to do in the digital marketing area.
But what they end up doing is they map it all out, they put it on their schedule, maybe, and then when it comes time to follow through, they go, oh, I don't feel like doing that today. Creatives are definitely into their feelings and they think I only can do things when creativity strikes or when I feel like doing it. So the way to do this is number one, make a plan. And that needs to involve social media. It needs to involve digital marketing, which I'm sure you talk about a lot on your episodes and things, so you need an email list. You need lead magnets, you need a good website. All of the things that keep you from being hidden.
But more than that, you need to consistently show up and follow the plan, especially when you don't feel like it because the truth is how, how often do you and I Sigrun actually feel like doing most of the stuff that we follow through on every day? I mean, most days never, right? We're like it's good in theory, but I mean, even this morning, I'm so excited to talk to you, but the thought of going, oh, it's raining, I have to fix my hair. It's going to be on video and audio, I can't just show up in my pajamas. Our brain does all that stuff to tell us why we don't want to show up and that's the most important work. So number one, have a plan, but most importantly, what's on the plan is not as critical as showing up consistently and putting yourself out in the world in some way. And then once you get good at that, you can add more things to the plan. But I think people believe it's, I need the plan. I don't know the plan. Somebody else has the secrets to the plan. What's on the plan is way less important than you showing up for yourself and following through, which is the biggest issue that I find creatives have, is just not doing the work.
Sigrun:
What about the pricing thing? You say it's a reflection of your self-worth, but it's like a chicken and egg problem, right? When are you ready to raise your prices? And if you have a potential client in front of you, you're like, is this the time where I say the new price or not and will they… How do creatives, especially when it's about, like in your case, it's interior design so you just have one client in front of you and either it's this project or maybe you don't have food next week or next month. So how have you figured out how to overcome that yourself and what do you teach your clients to do?
Tobi Fairley:
Okay. So a couple of things with pricing, which are really important. So what most people do to price their services or their art or their products is they look around and see what other people are pricing. And then they also judge whether they think that person is better than them, worse than them, more experienced than them, has been in business longer than them. They have this whole internal list, that they don't even realize they have, that they're judging themselves against other people. And the fascinating thing with that is they call it the going rate and I call it the going out of business rate, which is so funny because they have no idea if those people are making any money, if they're barely hanging on. They have no idea if they have the same expenses and overhead and responsibilities that they do. So it's like a shot in the dark. It's like let me just pick this price because somebody else that I don't even really know their story or their information picked it, so that must be what people are willing to pay.
I throw that entire thought process and approach out the window completely and I help people understand what their financial position is. What is your overhead, what do you need to make, what do you want to make, what could we charge to create that kind of revenue and profit that you want to make, and then how do we make sure that the product or service you're selling is worth that price, right? So they want to dumb down their pricing on the front end, based on the going rate, I say you can literally price yourself any way you want to if your service can hold up to that price and you follow through. Now you can't give a really high price and really poor service because it's only going to work a couple of times and it's not going to hold up. But as opposed to hoping that the world starts to raise the value of what they believe in for an artist, you have to set your price of what you need or want to make, you absolutely can dream big, and then you can meet that price with your deliverables.
So for example, for me, years ago, like in 2004, I started my business in 1999, so only four or five years in, I was saying this is not working for me. I think I was charging $150 an hour, which was pretty close to the going right back then. I was even probably a little ahead if I had judged my experience, because I'm pretty new, but I'm like, okay, I'm confident enough to charge $150 an hour. And it was not sustainable. I could not run my business, have employees. There was no way. And it was this constant feast or famine because you have to wait for a high-end design client who wants to spend a lot of money. They're just not calling you every day, right? There's some things you can do, but it's not everyday that somebody is like please let me give you $350,000 for furniture to do my entire house.
And so I started realizing this is not working. I was working with a business consultant and I chose to start charging a flat fee, which I did based on square footage to help me get kind of a number, but it was a really, hugely. So the first flat fee I proposed to someone, I remember exactly because I was terrified, was $29,000 to do their main floor of their house. Just the creative, not the furniture. Just me, all my ideas, me managing the project. I was terrified. And they said, yes, and didn't even blink. And I was like, I just left so much money on the table. So then the very next one I charged, I went through the same kind of square footage process and estimated about how much time I would spend.
And I was thinking, if you charge a flat fee, then it's not hourly, the onus is on me. If I can do it in fewer hours, I can make more money. And so then the client just gets to decide if it's worth the value or not. It's a yes or no and I have to deliver. So it's on me to make more money, but it's also on me to make sure I'm delivering the money's worth. And the next one was $42,000. They said, yes. I'm like I left money on the table. The next one was 56,000. And then of course it wasn't just the same size house. The houses were getting bigger and the budgets were bigger, but at the same time, I was inching up my fee, which was far different than somebody charging $150 an hour for two hours here and three hours there. I was literally taking on these big projects for multiple five figures. I even had a six-figure design fee not too long after that.
And I started to realize it was value driven, not me putting a price tag on my head like a commodity that can be compared to other people. Because if we create a business that's really valuable, we can't be compared to other people. It's not apples to apples. But as long as we're saying, well my price is 150 and so is this person's, they're only looking at price, they're not looking at what you deliver, what the experience is. And so I really started to understand that and I started to teach that to people, which is terrifying to put that kind of value on your head, like I said on your work because they feel like it's I've priced me, how could I possibly be worth six figures on a job. But once you step into that, even though it's very scary and start to understand what it is the client really wants and how to meet them with the value they're asking for, it's a whole new ball game and you can start to really create the life and business you want because you're looking at yourself as a valuable service that the client really needs, not believing I'm this little piddly artist and the going rate is. So that's why you see, I call it the one side, the going out of business rate and then really shifted to knowing the value.
And it's funny because we also believe we create the value, we decide our value, but what's really the truth is the client decides if they want what you're offering and if they're willing to pay that. And so that's where the whole idea of the ideal client and those kinds of things come in, that you have to align with the right people. It's not like everybody in the world's going to say, sure, let me give you $50,000. But once you know your offering, once you know the value of it, once you've really had success with it, then you can start to align with the right people. But just such a huge shift for creatives and it's exactly what I help people do every day.
Sigrun:
That is a fabulous [inaudible 00:21:49] and I love that. But I guess that also meant that you were changing your ideal client as you were increasing your prices?
Tobi Fairley:
Yes. And I mean, I always had some of those ideal clients, I just wasn't weeding out the other clients. And that's a great point because I was going to mention this too. So what a lot of creatives also do is they put everybody that approaches them in the sort of pot of clients and they let the ones that aren't their ideal client make them believe that their prices are too high. And what I did was say, okay, there's a smaller number of people who are aligned with my highest end one-on-one most valuable service where I'm charging these really high fees and then there's a huge gap from my highest end product all the way down to all the other things people are going to be asking me.
And then that's when I really started looking at how can I offer other services that are different in that they're either scalable or I'm just a guide, I just meet people on a Zoom call once a week for four weeks and guide them in designing their own house. And I, of course, get a much lower rate, but I still would get, at the time when I started offering these kind of VIP or strategy sessions, $1500 to $5,000 depending on the work I was doing. But I wasn't going out to the client's house, they weren't getting access to me. So it was really learning that whole concept of a value ladder and filling in other services that met people where they are.
And I think what I see creatives doing more often than not as trying to cram everybody into the high-end service even when they're not a fit and wondering why it's not working and then hearing the you're too expensive, you're not a fit, feeling the rejection of all the people that walk away and believing that means they have to lower their price.
What I know about my high-end service is that nine out of 10 people that contact me are not a fit for that. Maybe 19 out of 20, right? It takes the right client and I have to have other revenue streams that sustain my business and fill in the gap while I can patiently wait for the right client to fit my highest end service and I have other offerings to meet people where they are. That's when my membership came into play, I started coaching other designers and other things. And that's where I started really filling the gap with my gifts and talents, knowing that allowed me to wait for the correct client that was a match to fit into that highest end service. And I think people don't know that information, they're getting scared, they think I only do one thing. They don't get that they can offer other services and so they find themselves having a more scarcity mindset and getting fearful of paying the bills. And they're like, fine, I'll work for less or I'll knock this price off or I'll sell it for less. And they consistently devalue their products and services instead of just thinking differently about how they can work with people.
Sigrun:
What if you are actually selling, you decide you want to actually sell products versus services. Does that apply as well?
Tobi Fairley:
Absolutely. So I have a student in my membership and I love her story. She sells physical products, not even information products, at least to begin with, she sells chairs, these beautifully designed dining chairs that are very unique and they're about $2000 $2500, I think US dollars apiece. So it takes the right client to be able to buy a $2,000 chair, especially to be able to buy a whole dining room full of them, right, if you don't just want it for a desk chair or something. And she came into my membership and I was teaching her how to think differently and I said, “well, what do all of your raving fans that don't buy your product want” because she said “I have all these people who love me and who love my brand, but who can't afford my chairs.” And I said “what could you teach them?”
And we went through all these exercises for a few months and she came up with the idea of I could teach them how to do this for themselves. I can teach them how to find an antique chair frame, how to design it and reupholster it themselves, how to pick the fabrics. And she was unsure about it. She was like, “won't this cannibalize my main business?” And I'm like, “absolutely not because the person who can pay 2000 or 20,000 for 10 of your chairs is never going to be in their garage unless they just absolutely love it as a hobby, reupholstering a chair. But all the other people who think that they can't afford it might want that.”
So she launched, about four months ago, an upholstery eight module course on how to do this yourself. When it launched, she already had a waiting list of a thousand people for it. She has had a launch and a Black Friday special and she's already made 60 grand and she's working on all of her launches for 2020 right now and beyond. And it's so amazing because she had no idea that that was even possible for her. She really didn't tap into the fact that her audience would want and love that and want a piece of her for $200 instead of $2,000. And then the funny thing is, and I told her I thought this might happen, and she's watching it now to see if it does and I think it's going to be true for her, that it actually will sell her chair's better because when people try to do it themselves and they're like, whoa, this is way harder than I thought and mine looks horrible, I now understand the value of her chairs and I'm just going to buy one of those. So it's a win-win to send people to your high end product.
And I think that's a perfect example, whether it's info products, physical products, she does both now, she filled that gap. But it works in both ways and she could have had that pressure to just lower the price of her chairs, which would have really killed her margins and wouldn't have been sustainable, and instead she decided to think differently and create something in the gap. And that's what's really made a huge difference. So now it's so fun because she's like, what else can I do? What else can I create? How can I meet them in other ways? And all kinds of ideas are flowing now.
Sigrun:
And I love that you mentioned the value ladder. We also call it [inaudible 00:28:02] ascension model, where we have the, it's kind of the same ideal client, but they're in different stages of their life in terms of how much money they have, their readiness to invest. But having different products, or services, to bring them along the way because they might still be the person that is the perfect ideal client a year from now or two years from now and you want to do something for them now. And I think every artist, designer, creative person can do this with services or products, or like you said, she had both. I love that example, really love that.
Tobi Fairley:
And I think that what you just said is so important because what I see people first trying to do when they're like, okay, I'll buy in to the scalable product thing or this doing a course or doing a whatever, but in their mind they're like I have this high end client and then I'll go over on a completely different ladder and do this really low end DIY thing. And they don't understand why that doesn't work. And I completely agree with you that it's the same client. They're on the exact same ladder and they're able to move up, like you said, at some point to your highest end service, which is exactly what you want. You want to be pulling them, or allowing them, to ascend this ladder. And I think that's where people go wrong a lot of times because they don't understand it is the same client. And for whatever reason. It might be that they don't have the money yet. It might be, like for an interior designer, it may be that they want your high end services for their main home, but they also have a beach home or a weekend home and they don't want to put that much money into it. So they just want you to guide them to do it.
So there's all kinds of reasons, not just financial reasons, why people want to dip into your other services. Maybe they want to give your course to their daughter for a gift or… There's other reasons that they wouldn't buy those different pieces of your offerings and I think that's really important to understand. You don't abandon your ideal client or have three or four different avatars because it gets so confusing and then you have to have three or four different branding messages and it's impossible to sustain. You need the one ideal client and all the ways you can meet them where they are.
Sigrun:
And that is a perfect roundup to a great conversation Tobi. So what is the best way for people to find you online?
Tobi Fairley:
Okay, well the fun way to find me is on Instagram because interior design is really visual eye candy, so there's a lot of pretty, pretty stuff. They can follow me, they can hear business ideas too, but they can see my designs, they can see entertaining ideas and all kinds of fun stuff. And I'm @TobiFairly, pretty much on all social media, but Instagram is a really fun place to find me. They can find me on my website at tobifairley.com and see the design work I do, the memberships I have, and all the fun things I do. But very, very visible out in the social media world, so look for me there. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to have a DM for me. Sigrun and I, we communicate there all the time, right? The DMS are the deal.
Sigrun:
Dms are the deal, yes. Please tag us on Instagram. Let us know that you listened. We would love to hear from you. Thank you for coming on the show Tobi.
Tobi Fairley:
You're so welcome. Thank you for having me.
Sigrun:
Have you secured your spot for SIGRUN Life yet? This is your last chance to sign up. Go to the show notes sigrun.com/403 where you can find the link to sign up for SIGRUN Life plus all the links to Tobi Fairley. Thank you for listening to the SIGRUN Show. Did you enjoy this episode? Let me know that you listened by tagging me in your Instastory or Instagram posts using my handle sigruncom and the hashtag sigrunshow. See you in the next episode.