http://www.thelittledesigncorner.com/

The Little Design Corner, Sydney (2026)

17/09/2026

You need a better system for staying visible to people who already send you work (or who could send you work).

Many of your past clients, old qualified leads, builders, photographers, suppliers, consultants and other industry contacts will refer you work if you’ve been easy to work with before and you stay in touch with them.

But if they’ve not heard from you for 18 months, don’t assume you will be the person they remember if someone asks them whether they know a good designer.

This is why I teach my Bootcamp students to keep a simple outreach tracker that tracks this system (and provide the tracker as part of the full Design Business Operating System that underpins their business).

Once a month spend 30 minutes choosing 5-10 people from your network and make contact.

When you’re doing this don’t just send a weird “just checking in” message because you’re desperate for work. Give them a genuine reason to hear from you e.g. comment/message them about a recent project they have posted on IG, ask whether they have capacity to help you with a project you’re working on, follow up on a renovation you discussed collaborating on months ago, thank them for a referral they sent you or just send them something helpful because it made you think of them.

The goal is to BE A HUMAN!!! And build relationships.

You’re not trying to sell them anything or ask them to send you work. Don’t be weird.

You also don’t need to contact them constantly. Rotating through your network means that most people might only hear from you once or twice a year.

This is one of the easiest ways to reduce the ‘feast or famine’ problem that so many clients have because it turns referrals into an actual business system.

I call this my ‘top of mind strategy’ and I share more info about this in my blog post on this topic.

Comment TOP and I’ll send it over to you.

Also comment BOOTCAMP if you want more info about my business program for designers where I teach the full step by step detail of hundreds of systems and strategies exactly like this one.

16/09/2026

I saw a reel this morning from a stylist who has a full warehouse of furniture and not enough jobs to cover her rent and insurance.

I went to the comments and lots of other designers were saying the same thing. People talking about work disappearing, projects slowing down, clients taking longer to make decisions and being more cautious about what they are spending on.

This is the hard part about running a small business.

At the moment we are dealing with interest rate changes, a lack of consumer confidence, global events, property market moves, client delays and big discretionary spending getting pushed back.

You can’t control any of that but you can control how exposed your business is when things like this happen.

If your team, office, software and other overheads were built for twice your current workload, you have a problem.

If your only source of new work is waiting for somebody to find you on Instagram, you have a problem.

If you don’t know how long your cash will last if revenue drops another 20%, you have a problem.

This is why I would treat this period as a business survival exercise.

Right now you should be protecting cash, stripping unnecessary costs, looking after clients that already trust you, keeping your marketing going and improving the systems you have never had time to fix during busy periods.

Also make sure that when things improve you build a cash reserve for next time something like this happens. I always have at least 6 months of cash in my personal and business bank accounts at all times. This means I have time to think, change direction or avoid making desperate decisions.

You can’t predict the market but you can do things to try and protect your business so it still exists once the market improves again.

If you’re new here:

👋 Follow me Dr Clare Le Roy | Business for Designers and binge all the other content I have to help you grow your design/architecture business

💻 Comment TEMPLATE for more info on my templates and courses

🤝 Comment BOOTCAMP to join my business course for interior designers

🏡 Comment INFO to join an upcoming free info session about SketchUp

14/09/2026

Don’t waste your money and time on letterbox drops!! Here’s what to do instead…

🤝 Comment BOOTCAMP to join my business course for interior designers

Also, if you’re new here:

👋 Follow me Dr Clare Le Roy | Business for Designers and binge all the other content I have to help you grow your design/architecture business

💻 Comment TEMPLATE for more info on my templates and courses

🏡 Comment INFO to join an upcoming free info session about SketchUp

13/09/2026

Here’s what makes SketchUp + Layout such a game changer for designers ⤵️

You can design your project in 3D and create all your scaled drawings (floor plans, elevations, sections) without starting from scratch each time. You can also do your electrical, lighting, RCPs in SketchUp and Layout as well.

It’s all done in one workflow so there’s no doubling up on work, additional software or redrawing things over and over.

This is exactly how I run every design project, from first concepts right through to detailed documentation (as you can see here).

SketchUp is also a fraction of the price of most other professional design software (which is why you’ll find that almost every interior design studio around the world uses SketchUp in at least some part of their workflow).

If you’ve been thinking about learning it, I run a free info session where I show my full process and answer the questions I get asked all the time. It’s about 30 mins long and has been watched by more than 100,000 people around the world.

Comment INFO and I’ll send you a link to watch.

If you’re new here:

👋 Follow me Dr Clare Le Roy | Business for Designers and binge all the other content I have to help you start, grow and scale a profitable design/build business

💻 Comment TEMPLATE for more info on my templates and courses for design + build professionals

🤝 Comment BOOTCAMP to join my business program for designers

13/09/2026

Comment INFO to watch my free 30 min info session about how learning SketchUp could save you thousands in your renovation or even help you start on a new career path :)

11/09/2026

The interior design industry has a reputation problem, especially in the bottom/middle of the market. Let me explain.

At the higher end of the market, clients are paying for judgement, experience and advice.

This is very different to paying for taste or “design skills”

Here’s what the role of a professional advisor looks like. You should be able to…

➡️ talk intelligently about house values, recent sales, renovation spend and whether a proposed level of investment makes sense for their property
➡️ go to site meetings with an architect or consultant and be able to contribute something useful
➡️ be unconflicted in the way you charge, so you can tell a client when something isn’t worth buying because you don’t make more money when they spend more
➡️ talk about large amounts of money without projecting your own financial judgement
➡️ communicate with all sorts of people, from highly educated clients and consultants to the 17 yo apprentice on site
➡️ disagree with a client without becoming defensive
➡️ explain why you’re recommending something in commercial terms, not just because it “looks better”
➡️ understand the wider implications of a design decision, including cost, maintenance, resale, buildability
➡️ speak with confidence about fees and budgets without apologising for the numbers
➡️ make clear decisions and recommendations rather than giving clients endless options and making them do the thinking themselves
➡️ know the limits of your own expertise and bring in the right specialist when something is outside it

This is the difference between being seen as someone who makes a house look good (low paid designer) and someone a client trusts to advise them through an expensive project with lots of money on the line (high paid designer).

The more your value sits in judgement, experience and decision making the harder it becomes to compare you to others, which allows you to charge a lot more for the work you do.

If you want to build this kind of design business, this is exactly what I teach inside Bootcamp.

It covers the commercial side of running a professional design studio and the systems that sit behind it.

Comment BOOTCAMP for info.

10/09/2026

Don’t shoot the messenger, but there’s a game you’re playing if you want to work with high net worth clients ⤵️

Here are a few more things they’re picking up on that I couldn’t fit in the post:

✅ Punctuality, but not eagerness. Arriving 10 minutes early and waiting in their driveway looks needy. Arriving exactly on time looks professional. Arriving late and you probably won’t get the job. Time is the most valuable asset of wealthy people. Respect it and arrive exactly on time.

✅ How you talk about other designers is important. Being competitive or dismissive shows insecurity, acknowledging another designer’s work generously shows you’re confident in your own work and not threatened. They’ve often met the others and want to see how you handle it.

✅ Whether you treat their problems as normal. They’ll mention things in passing that might sound a lot to you e.g. the kids’ school fees going up, having to fly to London for work, the investment property that needs a new tenant, the renovation at the beach house running over, the ski trip being booked out earlier than usual. To them this is normal life but if you react (even with a small “wow”) you’re showing them this isn’t normal to you.

✅ Whether your own life seems chaotic. If you seem stressed, behind, rushed, double booked or scrambling they assume their project will be handled the same way. Confident professionals radiate calm even when they’re busy.

Small details are the whole game at the top end of the market. You have to be on top of everything if you want to win their projects.

This is exactly the kind of strategic stuff we work through inside my business program…the things nobody else is teaching designers but that make the actual difference between a struggling business and a profitable one :)

Comment BOOTCAMP for more info.

Also, if you’re new here:

👋 Follow me Dr Clare Le Roy | Business for Designers and binge all the other content I have to help you start, grow and scale a profitable design/build business

💻 Comment TEMPLATE for more info on my templates and courses for design + build professionals

🏡 Comment INFO to join an upcoming free info session about SketchUp

08/09/2026

You might have run 100 design projects but your clients are probably doing this for the first time.

Never assume a client knows how a design project runs or how your process works.

Over communicating everything will always be better than not providing enough information.

That’s why I like using short videos inside a Client Welcome Pack as part of my onboarding process.

These are not polished training videos, they can just be simple 2-5 minute explanations or screen recordings of things clients regularly ask you or need help with.

For example:

➡️ how a design project works (break it down in phases)
➡️ how feedback and approvals work
➡️ why they shouldn’t use AI and how this impacts the design process
➡️ how and when you need them to make decisions
➡️ how communication works throughout the project
➡️ how procurement works
➡️ what your drawings are for
➡️ what happens on installation day
➡️ what happens if they change their mind

The best topics normally come from what you are asked most by clients, so focus on those as a starting point.

If you’ve explained the same thing to three different clients, it probably deserves its own video :)

Over time you end up with a much stronger onboarding system and far fewer repetitive conversations. Clients will also feel more confident because they actually understand what is happening.

To get a copy of my Client Welcome Pack Template comment WELCOME and I’ll send you the details.

If you’re new here:

👋 Follow me Dr Clare Le Roy | Business for Designers and binge all the other content I have to help you grow your design/architecture business

💻 Comment TEMPLATE for more info on my templates and courses

🤝 Comment BOOTCAMP to join my business course for interior designers

🏡 Comment INFO to join an upcoming free info session about SketchUp

07/09/2026

There was nothing wrong with my design business and it was working exactly as that business model was designed to work.

The problem was that I wanted a different outcome from it (more money but with no staff and no meetings in my diary).

When revenue depends on selling your time, there are only a few ways to grow e.g. you can charge more, you can take on more projects, you can work longer hours or you can hire people and build a larger studio.

None of those options interested me.

I didn’t want a bigger team to manage and I didn’t really even want more clients. I also didn’t want to add complexity in my life, in fact my preference was to make more money in a simpler way.

So I changed my business model.

I started looking at what I knew that could be turned into something useful once, then sold repeatedly. This resulted in selling courses, templates and education, which all gave me a completely different relationship between time and revenue.

You may love working 1:1 with clients but it may not be getting you to financial outcome you want from your life. Sometimes the answer is to get better at running the business you have but sometimes it means you have to decide whether that business can actually give you what you want.

That’s the decision I had to make and I’m so happy that I did!

The full video this Reel came from is on my YouTube channel. I go through how I moved from 1:1 interior design services into the online business I run now, including the thinking and decisions behind that change.

If you would like to watch the full video comment YOUTUBE and I’ll send you the link

Also, if you’re new here:

👋 Follow me Dr Clare Le Roy | Business for Designers and binge all the other content I have to help you grow your design/architecture business

💻 Comment TEMPLATE for more info on my templates and courses

🤝 Comment BOOTCAMP to join my business course for interior designers

🏡 Comment INFO to join an upcoming free info session about SketchUp

The Little Design Corner

17/09/2026

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14/09/2026

13/09/2026

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11/09/2026

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