# 90 | How to Create A Paid Waitlist for Interior Design Clients

Welcome to the Designers Oasis podcast. I'm your host, Kate Bendewald. If you're tired of one-size-fits-all all advice to running your interior design business, you're in the right place. Join me each week as we dive into topics to help you run a thriving interior design business. Without the hustle. We'll talk about the business of design, but also mindset and mental health because I know when you thrive, so will your life and business. It wasn't that long ago that I stepped away from my corporate interior design job to build my own design business so that I could realize my own creative dreams, have more time with the people I love, and serve my clients at the highest level, while making more money than I ever could have working for someone else. It wasn't always easy, and I made my share of mistakes along the way. Fast forward to today. And I've learned a thing or two. Since then I've built multiple six-figure interior design businesses on authentic word-of-mouth referrals with many repeat clients. And I want to share it all with you the ambitious, inspired, and I get it occasionally overwhelmed interior designer who shares this dream of transforming lives through the art of interior design, You can do this. Thank you for letting me spend part of this day with you. Let's get to it.

Welcome back to the Designers Oasis podcast. I'm your host, Kate Bendewald, and I am so excited to be talking with you today about how to create and develop a paid waitlist. So first a paid waitlist is anytime you are making an agreement with a client and exchanging money for a secured spot on your design schedule in your calendar. And there's a lot of questions around, how do I implement this? How do I know when is the right time? How do I get clients to trust me and believe in me and get excited about the opportunity to be on the wait list? How much money do I take? Lots of questions around it. So we're going to get right into it today. So first, why would you want to incorporate a paid wait list? Well, at some point in your career, you are going to be at a in a position where you have an opportunity to take a really exciting project. However, you're not able to start with them immediately, because you are currently serving your existing clients. And you know that if you were to take on this project, it would right now, it would compromise your ability to serve your other clients, and that's not what you want for your business. That's going to cause burnout, and it's not what you want for your other clients, because you want to continue to nurture them and give them the kind of experience that you expect for yourself and for your business. So it's a good idea when you have this situation, it's a mutual commitment. Okay? So a paid wait list offers you a way to both commit to working together, so you commit to putting them on your design schedule and they commit to paying you. What I like about this too is that clients who are willing to be put on a wait list are going to naturally prioritize design over a timeline, so clients who want things yesterday are not my ideal client. I want to work with clients who are willing to put in the time that it takes to really make an exceptional design for their home. Okay?

The other thing that this does is that it allows clients to see that you're in demand, right? And that's a good thing. It says people want to work with her, she's in demand. He or she's in demand. This is great, and they really can take you more seriously at when they when they see that you're in demand. And the other thing that this does is that it also says to your client, especially if you articulate this clearly to them, is that it. And in when it comes to talking to your clients about the benefit of the paid waitlist, this is a really important thing to come to clarify with your clients. One is that when they commit to the the waitlist, that when it's their time, that they're going to get the same kind of care and attention that you give to your existing clients, okay? And if they're willing to wait, they're going to have a much better experience working with you. And it also says to them that you're not willing to compromise the integrity of your service with your other clients, no matter how amazing a project is, okay? You can say, Look, I'm a boutique business. We're a small outfit.

We have close relationships with our clients, and this is what we need to be able to do in order to make it work. So that's one of the ways that you can start to talk to your clients about the benefits of being on a wait list. The other thing that you can say to your clients is, look, if we do this now, and we commit to putting you on our wait list and starting in, you know, two, three months, whatever the case may be, this ensures you that in, you know, October, whenever you're talking about that we can start with your project. But if you come back in October, I can't guarantee you that I'm going to have time at that point with you. We we may have slotted other projects for for that time. So it's, it's ensuring them that they've got a commitment on that they're committed to your calendar. Okay, so those are some really key talking points that you can discuss with your client when you're talking about the benefit of of going ahead and committing to the waitlist. So how do you implement this paid waitlist? Right?

First of all, this is something that you're probably going to do when you're a little bit more established as a business owner. You're you're probably not going to be looking at a paid wait list right out of the gate, unless maybe you're still working in a in a full time nine to 5w two type job, and you're doing this on the side, maybe, maybe you would be then. But typically this is something that you're going to implement once you've been in business a little bit and you've got a steady stream of clients coming your way. So the first thing I want you to start to think about is sharing on your website, maybe in your social media, as well as in in newsletter, if that's something that you have in your business when you are taking new clients. So I like to keep it a little bit broad, so you might say we're now booking clients with projects starting in early fall or in January of 2025, or whatever the case may be, and give them sort of a general idea of when you are starting to book a client, so that when they book a discovery call, they've already kind of got that you've that seed in their mind that you're not going to start right away, and then you can have the opportunity to discuss it, the details of it on the Discovery call. But the first thing I want you to do is to find a way to share this availability publicly on again your usually this would be like your website page wherever they would maybe book a discovery call with you, or give you, send you their information. However you set up that initial call to action would be a great place to say, we're now booking clients for early Fall book a discovery call now to see if we're a good match or whatever your language is okay.

And then you want to make sure that you set up, put a reminder on your calendar for the first of the month every month, to you or somebody that you work with to go in and update that you don't want it to be, you know, middle of January. And they go to your website and they say, we're now taking projects for early fall. And then they're confused. They're like, well, is that full of this year? Is that fall of last year? And she's not updating her website? So just make it a habit to leave it kind of broad, right? I like to do seasons and keep it updated. Really important there. Now, the other thing is that you need to know before you ever get on a discovery call, when your first availability would be, you need to have that information available so that you can have that conversation with your client, to be able to share that availability. If you're not prepared, it's not going to look great if you're like, I don't quite know when I could start. Can I get back to you? Right?

You want to be able to say, you know, really sell them on this idea and say, you know, once you vetted them, and you've sort of decided I think this is a really great project for us, I think we could be a good match. I would love to get started with the with the consultation, which we can do right away in the next coming week or two. But just so you know, the actual project, we wouldn't be able to start it until, you know, second week of October or November, whatever it is for you, so know when you can start, prior to ever getting on a discovery call the doors to the interior designers business blueprint open September 6. There has never been a better. Time to join. I want to share with you an email I received from a new student inside my program, the interior designers business blueprint. Kelly said, I just want to take a minute to share how much you have helped my business since I joined. I had processes coming in, but I had so many holes, and I really hadn't done the hard work of sitting down to evaluate my ideal client or shift my mindset around my own value. I've adopted so many of your resources, and I now have a solid workflow going when I sit down to work each day, I know what needs to be done and exactly what file to open to get it done.

I jacked up my prices beyond for I was initially comfortable, but knowing that the experience I'm now providing the clients is worth the money, I haven't had anyone say no yet, and I'm getting projects to completion, photo shoots completed, and I'm ready to really tackle my marketing strategy. Just a big thank you for all you do. I'm so incredibly to have found this program, and I'm committing to this incredible year of growth. If you're like Kelly and you are looking for clarity and confidence and a helping hand in growing your interior design business, join us inside the interior designers business blueprint, where you'll get access to powerful on demand. Trainings, the best community of big hearted interior designers who are ready to cheer you on and to help support you. Live Q and A, sessions with yours truly to get the A's to your cues, along with templates, tools, resources and more. If you're an ambitious interior designer who's ready to stake your claim? I've got a seat waiting for you. Head over to designers oasis.com. Forward slash blueprint and join now before the doors close again for this season. Again, that's designers oasis.com. Forward slash blueprint or grab the link in the show notes below. Doors open September 6. I'll see you there.

The next question I get a lot is, well, do I still do the consultation? And the answer is, yes, absolutely. Get on that discovery call, determine if they're a right fit. Share with them your vision and how you work. Make sure you're a good fit. Talk about your pricing, talk about your timeline. And if you start to feel like, yep, work, we feel this feels like a really good match. We're checking, we're checking a lot of good boxes here. Then go ahead and commit to that next step, which is the consultation. Say, I think we'd be great together. We can start at this at this time. Seems like that works. Okay? For you, I'd love to go ahead and get the consultation scheduled. That way, I can present to you a proposal that you can review, and we can take it from there, and at that point we will get you locked into our project calendar. Okay, so yes, take that discovery, call Yes, book that consultation, if they feel like a right fit. And then the next question I get is, but are you going to put together a full scope of work and proposal and retainer prior to starting the project? And the answer to that is also Yes.

So what you don't want to do is to take somebody's money, put them on the wait list, fast forward a few months later, and then give them a proposal, and all of a sudden they realize, yeah, you know what? This isn't quite in my budget. That would be no bueno. The other thing is that you want to you want a financial commitment from them. You want to know what what you're both getting yourselves into, so that you can slot their project into your calendar appropriately. Okay, so go do that consultation, and at the end of the consultation, you're going to prepare full scope of work, a proposal and a retainer, and all of these things need to happen before they are ever committed to your calendar and you agree on a start date. Okay? When it comes to collecting the retainer, the biggest question is, well, how much should I take? And I think that you have a couple of options here, and this might be something that you do on a case by case basis, or it's something that you implement as a rule across the board. So the retainer could be if it's a shorter wait list. So let's say you can't start for four to six weeks. If that's the case, I would go ahead and take that full initial retainer, whatever that might be. If it's a longer wait list over six weeks, perhaps what I might consider doing is taking a smaller, non refundable retainer. How much should that be? Well, I'm going to say that the answer to that should be the amount of that retainer should be dependent on the size of the proposal. So maybe it's a 50% of that retainer. And then the rest of it would be due when it's time to start.

The reason why, in both cases, these should be non refundable retainers, in order to get them on your wait list, and you're making a commitment, and you're not making room for any other clients to them, that needs to be a non refundable retainer, and that needs to be in the agreement that you guys make. So I just feel like if it's a longer wait list, longer wait list, go ahead and maybe consider breaking that initial retainer up into two smaller fees, and then they would make the the second half of that payment at the start of the project. But again, this is completely up to you. You are the boss. There's no one size fits all. Approach to how you run your business. I want you to think about what feels in alignment with your integrity and your core values, what sits right in your in your gut, and what's right for the client. Okay, so take into consideration how long is the wait list, what is the size of the retainer in the proposal, and then make a decision from there. Okay, just make sure that you are 100% clear with your client on what your wait list policy is, and they know all of the details before you take their money and put them on your wait list.

Okay, so the last thing I want to share with you is once you have gone through the process of doing the consultation, you have prepared a proposal and a client agreement that they have signed, and they have paid you money a retainer that acts as their commitment to be on your wait list, and they are slotted on your calendar. What you don't want to happen is for that period of time to go, and all of a sudden there's crickets, and your client doesn't hear from you. It's very important that you are connecting with your clients who are on your wait list, that can build anxiety in them and think they can think to themselves, gosh, I've just spent all this money, and now I haven't heard from her. You know, honestly, anything could happen? Was she in a car wreck? Is she still around? Did she move? Did I just get swindled? Right? You don't want those kinds of thoughts swirling around in their heads, so make sure that you are doing things to stay in connection with them. Couple of ways you can think about doing this. Number one, you can ask yourself, is there any aspect of the design that I can initiate now, maybe you decide to go ahead and do a site survey and start to get that information put into your system. Or maybe you do the deep dive interview with your clients. Maybe you get their client portal set up and you invite them to that right? You don't have to do these things, but if you have the capacity to do it, it can help your client feel like, yeah, we've already kind of got started. We're just in a holding pattern until they can really dive into the design. So that's one way that you can can set it up. Another way that you can do this is you can set up a series of emails that are automated, that your client gets on a regular cadence. So if you've got a program like flow desk, or dubsado, is really good at this, because it's based on the it's Well, I don't, I don't actually use Flow desk, but I know a lot of designers do and love it. So flow desk might have this feature, but I know that with at least dubsado, you can send specific emails on a regular cadence that's based on the behaviors of the client. So I'll just say that. I'll let you do the digging on which tool might be the right fit for you. But this is going to be a series of onboarding emails that you can send to your clients. So this can be things like, here's a link to your client portal, and here's a video navigating you around, showing you how when, once we get there, this is what your client portal will eventually look like and how you can use it. This is how you can ask questions or comment or approve things or pay invoices, those kinds of things. So other things you can do is revisit the process.

Right if your clients are on a two to three month wait list, they're going to forget what you shared about your your process, so you can send an email that reiterates, this is what the process will look like. If you have a team, send an email that introduces your team and says, This is who is responsible for admin or procurement or whatever. Maybe you have a recent project that you want to show off that you can put together an email and this is how we solve this client's problem. There are so many content ideas that you can do for this onboarding series, just to make sure that you create something that is as evergreen as possible, meaning something that you can sort of create once and then it works for you for for a year two or three beyond that. You don't want this to be something that you have to recreate all the time. So coming up with that New Client Onboarding series that you can share with your client while they're on the wait list is going to allow them to feel really supported, so that by the time you are ready to kick off the project, they are so excited, they know what to expect, and they feel supported. So. Alright, so that's a wrap for how to build and establish a client wait list for your interior design projects. I hope that you have gotten some answers to your questions about how to do this and how to make it work in your business, this is a great problem to have, so hats off to you. You know just again, it's about making your client feel supported and making sure that you have a pipeline of clients waiting in the wings, right? And you can commit them to your calendar, and you're not risking losing a prospective client because you you because you didn't know how to sell them on. Hey, stick with me. I got you. It'll be worth the wait. I assure you, it'll be worth the wait, right? Get excited for them, and they'll know, look, this is the right designer. He or she is worth the wait, and let's do this thing all right. Again, if you have found this episode, or any of these episodes helpful, would you please rate or review us? Right? Wherever you listen to your podcast, it means a lot to us, and it helps us get found by other designers, so that we can keep making episodes just like this for you. Before we go, I'm going to read a quick review that we recently received that just lit me up. Thank you so much. She says, I love the show. It gives me so many great insights and steps to improving my business. I listen to you every week, and have almost heard every episode. Please don't stop. Thank you so much. I needed to hear that today. I'm not gonna quit. I'm not gonna quit making these episodes. Just yet, I am feeling really excited about some of the content we have planned for you this season. So stick around. Share us your feedback. Let us know what you think it means a lot to us. All right, take care. Bye for now. Hey friend,

Thank you so much for letting me spend a part of this day with you. I'm so passionate about helping designers like you, and I believe in a rising tide that when one of us does well, we all do better. So if you share this attitude of abundance with me. I want you to do just one little thing. Please share this episode with someone you think might love it. And if you're feeling extra generous today, go ahead and take just 30 seconds to open your podcast app and leave us a five star rating and review. It's free for you to do, and it helps me to be able to keep making more episodes and resources for you. However you choose to help, please know I appreciate you so very much. Thank you, my friend. Have a wonderful rest of your day. I'll see you soon.