Model the Successful- and you will be successful, too!

by Nika Stewart

"If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you'll achieve the same results."
- Tony Robbins, bestselling writer and motivational speaker

In other words, if you want to run a successful design business, copy what successful designers are doing, and you'll achieve the same success.

Sound good? Are you interested in modelling successful designers? Great!

So, what are successful designers doing? How do they work, think, act? Here are 3 traits that are common to successful designers:

1. Successful designers have systems
   What do you do when a call comes in? When you measure a room? When you hire a contractor? Do you have specific steps to follow for every part of your business? Or do you wing it? I used to! But I learned that "winging it" leads to chaos and confusion, and you certainly can't grow from there. Successful designers handle each part of their business the same way every time. They follow a system for everything: marketing, selling, setting up consultations, etc. Systems lead to consistency, organization, and effectiveness.
2. Successful designers study marketing
   Unfortunately, being a terrific designer doesn't necessarily make you successful. In order to succeed in business, we need to be super marketers. Successful designers are either great at marketing, or they hire people who are. The most lucrative design firms actually spend more time and energy on marketing than they do on studying design.

The trick for those of you who don't enjoy marketing is to learn some fun, creative ways to market your business. Once you do this, you will have more fun with marketing - which will lead to more success.

3. Successful designers are detail-oriented
   This may seem obvious, but are you doing it? Successful designers take care with every detail of the business - from all aspects of office work to each element of design projects. This doesn't mean they do it all themselves (in fact, profitable design companies delegate a lot of the details), but they always make sure that every part of their business - down to the smallest details - supports their exceptional image.

What's interesting is that once you have systems in place, details and delegating become so easy! So the better it gets, the better it gets.