January 23, 2019

How to Gain Confidence in Your Marketing with Heather Havenwood

39 minutes

Marketing is essential to growing your interior design business. But a lot of times creative types (i.e. interior designers) suffer from a lack of confidence or what’s called imposter syndrome. Today on the show, Darla and Natalie tackle the problem head on with Heather Havenwood.

Heather is a self-described serial entrepreneur, of Havenwood Worldwide, LLC and Chief Sexy Boss. She is regarded as a top authority on internet marketing, business strategies and marketing. Getting her start in 1999, she has played an active role in the online marketing world since before most even had a home computer.

What You’ll Hear On This Episode of Wingnut Social

[2:15] Upcoming events!

[6:27] Heather’s background as an entrepreneur

[9:14] The two components to increasing your confidence

[13:58] How interior design is (sorta) like mowing your lawn

[17:45] The stats show: Women apologize too much

[21:50] The third entity

[27:10] How interior design is (sorta) like acting

[29:17] Dealing with rejection

[32:17] Whut up, Wingnut?

Connect with Heather Havenwood

Heather Havenwood

LIKE A BOSS Podcast

Ask Heather Ann

Resources & People Mentioned

LuAnn Live

High Point Market

The Game of Life and How to Play It

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Be confident in your marketing by being unapologetically fierce

Heather says there are two factors that will help you boost your confidence and feel ready to land a big client. The first is learning to be unapologetic (or as she puts it, unapologetically fierce). We are taught from a young age to ask permission and to be hesitant to give our opinion, but interior designers are in the business of having opinions, and you need to be ready to stand firm behind your opinion as an expert in the field.

As Heather says, you may think that what you’re offering is obvious or interior design is easy, but for 99% of the people out there it’s not. It’s a foreign language that they don’t understand and they need help. So you should be unapologetic in offering your opinion, because you’re the one who knows design. When you’re selling your art it can feel weird, but it’s the business.

Learn to sell yourself

The second factor in boosting your confidence to improve your marketing is to learn to sell yourself, Heather says. That means you’re getting used to discussing your previous work and what knowledge and expertise you bring to interior design and to do that, you have to look at your expertise and knowledge as another entity.

As Heather says, by treating your expertise and knowledge as a third entity, you can view it as totally separate from you, so it’s not tied up in your own doubts or feelings about yourself. So if you think of it as another entity, then when someone comes to you with a design problem, you can say, “You should do x, y, or z” because of this third entity, aka your experience and knowledge. So rather than it’s “what I want,” it’s “this is what’s best.”

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