You are listening to The Design You Podcast with Tobi Fairley, episode number 61.
Welcome to The Design You Podcast, a show where interior designers and creatives learn to say no to busy and say yes to more health, wealth, and joy. Here is your host, Tobi Fairley.
Hello friends, especially my introverted friends, are you going to love today’s podcast! It’s another interview and this time it is with my friend, my very close friend who I adore, and you’ll be able to hear more about that in a second, and her name is Rachel Cannon.
She is a very talented interior designer from Louisiana, so not too far from me here in Arkansas, and we are going to tell you all about how we met, why we know each other, but we’re digging in in this episode to all kinds of goodness around introverts versus extroverts, around having systems and boundaries in your business and why that matters, depending on which type of personality you are, the introvert or the extrovert, and so much more. So sit back and enjoy this wonderful conversation with my buddy, Rachel Cannon.
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Tobi: Rachel, welcome to The Design You Podcast. I am so super excited you’re here, as in really, really super excited because we’ve talked about this for a little while but we’ve been friends for a long time and I want everybody to know about all the genius-ness that is Rachel Cannon, so welcome.
Rachel: Thank you, that’s very flattering. Thank you so much. I’m thrilled to be here.
Tobi: Well, I’m so glad you are, and let’s tell everybody a little bit about how we met and then I’m going to let you tell them about you, but I think it’s been about 10 years since we met, right?
Rachel: About that long, yeah.
Tobi: So I had in my baby days of doing design coaching and I had a designer A to Z course in Little Rock, you drove up from Louisiana, which is not too far away, with your mama and I had my mom there of course, and that’s the first time we met, right?
Rachel: Yes, that was actually a Mother’s Day gift for my mom from me because I think we had read about it in Southern Living magazine and we just thought that was the coolest idea so we came to see it, to be a part of it, and while I was there, I was just blown away by your business and you were so just in control and I was like, oh my god, I need to learn from this person. And you said something like, you told the people there to check out a website to find something and I was like, well wait, if you give everybody those websites how are you going to make money?
And you were like, you need to come to my mastermind class, and I was like, I mean, I made it my goal right then like, I’m doing that. And it was a few years before I could do it but you actually ended up in the meantime creating the Designer MBA course and so I came to that and it completely – I have told everybody for years, it completely transformed my business.
I had been in business for three years at that point and I felt like I was doing everything wrong and I was frustrated. I wasn’t making any money, working myself to death, and I literally was at the point of I will either do this or I will just become a librarian because if I’m a librarian I don’t have to talk to people all day. Clock in, clock out, be done with it.
Tobi: I love that, which we’re going to talk about in this podcast about introverts and extroverts, but I can just totally see you being a librarian. I can a little bit, but you’d be a funny librarian. So, I sometimes hesitate to say this because I don’t ever want it to come across as anything but like, the biggest compliment ever, but I see so much of myself in you. You’re just several years younger than me. And so I kind of think of you as my little sister or the mini me or the whatever sometimes, which is why I don’t mean it to sound horrible because you’re like, oh my gosh, I’m not the mini me, I’m a grown up myself.
Rachel: I take it as the highest compliment, please, no, that’s very sweet.
Tobi: But you’re just so similar in the way that you take action and that you’re just smart and you’re quick and I mean, that may be giving myself too much credit if I think that you’re like me, but I’ve loved that about you and I think of you kind of as – any time I know that we talk about something if we’re working together, if I’m a consultant for you or we’re just friends or whatever, I know that you can take whatever it is we’re talking about and take it to the highest version of that that you want it to be, which is what I love about that with you.
Rachel: I have to say, it has been a challenge because that is not something that comes naturally to me, which I know we’re going to get into in a minute, but it does definitely have to do with essentially just having someone who’s gone before me and tried these things ahead of me and been like, this works, this doesn’t work. And that is so valuable because I mean, I don’t know how many of the listeners have been in design for very long, but if you’ve been in it for any period of time like over 10 years, which I’ve been a designer since I was 20, you know that there’s a history in design of very secretive – everyone’s success was just, no one wanted to share how they had become successful.
It was sort of just like, throw you to the wolves and if you make it, you make it, if you don’t, you don’t. So it was sort of mind-boggling to me that there was someone who was as successful as you were, willing to say this is how I did it and this is what worked for me. So I am definitely a person that learns by watching how other people have done it and then taking that information and like, finding ways to make it work for me because I definitely can’t do everything on the level that you were doing it, especially when I first met you.
But it prompted me to take chances I probably would not have taken before, and so I’ve always been such a huge, especially now, advocate of coaching because it’s just – I don’t even want to say that it’s just to keep you accountable. It’s someone that can see things from another perspective and another angle and you’re sort of seeing the 40,000 foot view of it whereas when you’re in it, you’re seeing it under a microscope and so someone else can come in and help you see it in a different way, and that was just so beneficial. That definitely was transformative for me.
Tobi: Well, and one of the reasons I wanted to have you on today and talk about this is it’s not like – even though I jokingly say like, you’re like my little sister, like a mini me, that’s really not true. I mean, we have similar ways of going about things and I love that part, but one of the things that I wanted to talk about or multiple things, but the reason I wanted to talk about it is because it’s not like you learn things from me, just like I don’t learn from somebody else and then go back and replicate them exactly.
Like, you take it in, you’ve taken many, many things that I have said or figured out and then you’ve created your version of it, and in a lot of ways, in certain parts and pieces of the puzzle, you take it farther than me, or you’ve done a better job than me and that’s exactly what a good coach I think and a good student do. They figure it out and say how does this apply in my own life and business.
Rachel: Yeah, and I will say I did work with other coaches in the meantime before I was able to really financially commit. I just knew I needed some coaching and so after I had taken the Designer MBA, I found someone that coached me locally. And it’s no disrespect to them, but it was a very sort of broad view of business and as we all know, the interior design business is a very complicated business.
It’s probably one of the most complicated business models that there is, and it seemed to me like a lot of the advice or a lot of the guidance that I was given was really not specific to what I was trying to build for myself. It was more like this is standard business advice, just do this, and that really frustrated me. So that relationship didn’t last very long because I just felt like he’s not really digging deep with me. He’s basically just doing what worked for someone else.
So you’re right, you can’t just replicate something that someone else has done because it may work because of their personality, it may work because of their team, it may work because of where they’re located, but you have to be willing to take the risk and sort of gage the temperature of your exact circumstances and figure out like, what’s the work around for me. And I never felt like I got that from him, so I do think coaching is a wonderful thing. I mean, I love that you’re calling me your mini me. That’s totally making my day.
Tobi: I can already see a meme with like, me and you and mini me and we’ve got our fingers up to the corner of our mouth.
Rachel: Yeah. I mean, it’s very flattering but you’re right. There are definitely things that I’m like, I mean, Tobi can do that but I can’t. That’s not me and I don’t feel comfortable doing something that way. But you’ve never come back and been like, why didn’t you do it that way? You’ve always been such a cheerleader and a champion and that was another aspect of this other situation that I had been in. It kind of seemed like it was either his way or no way, and I’m like, well then this is never going to work because I’m not a robot and I can’t just do what has worked for every business that you’ve…
Tobi: Yeah, and I heard some – another coach that I’d worked with, someone I followed along the way years ago say that saying that I’m sure you’ve heard that’s like, take what you need and leave the rest, and that really resonated with me so much because of course, everything I say or believe is not going to be exactly a fit for other people and so I just like to give a lot of ideas and value and examples and things and if part of it you’re like, that’s not for me, I’m like, then forget you ever heard it.
I mean, of course there are some core things that you can’t forget you ever heard like the financials pieces and some of the other things, and let’s get into one of the things I think that you just really took and ran with more than – I mean like, it was the first big leap for you from kind of this getting this information and seeing what the possibilities were for you and that was putting some systems and some structure and some boundaries in place in your business, and that’s been seven or eight years ago now. I mean, really a while, right?
Rachel: That was probably right after Designer MBA. I mean, they sort of happened simultaneously but I came home, I created what I was calling a menu of services, which I now know is called a value ladder. I didn’t know that at the time, but because I keep following Tobi, she keeps teaching me.
Tobi: It probably wasn’t even called that back then because I think Russell Brunson or somebody like that probably came up with it and he probably wasn’t even barely born then yet. He was like, in junior high school or something at the time.
Rachel: Well, I created a menu of services, essentially because you had said what’s the thing people ask you for more than anything, and I said well, paint consultations, and you said, well then package it and put a fee on it, and if you can sell 20 of those a month, you’ll still make more money than you did last year trying to force everybody into this full service model. So that was a groundbreaker like, idea for me.
Then after that, it was starting to realize it’s not just that you go and pick the colors. It’s systemizing that process so that every client intake follows the same thing. So either we make contact or they make contact with us, and now we literally have a script that we follow either via email or on the phone, whenever we’re speaking with them. And then the next step is like a client qualification call with me where I take 10 minutes to just kind of talk to them and see what their project is.
And then essentially I go back to that same menu of services that I created however many years ago and I go okay, you fit into these three things so we’ll come do an in-home consultation with you and at the end of that consultation I’ll tell you where I think you fit on our scope of services and I’ll put a proposal together, we’ll meet again.
So that really – systemizing, not even just how I do the design, but systemizing the management of the clients, the management of the projects themselves, because there’s a lot of stuff that if you’re a designer, yes, it’s creative, but if you’re running the business, you have to run it as if it is a business and not just because it’s fun.
And there’s so many people out there that are getting into this because they think it’s going to be so glamorous and just it’s not like any other job and it’s going to be so much fun and it’s shopping all day long. That’s not what it is, and the people looking at that we’re seeing have such great success, a lot of times that’s now how their business is set up. I mean, it may look that way from the outside but there are definitely some structures in place and they have policies and they’ve got a contract in place and there’s boundaries that have been set.
And I think that was a huge lesson for me is systems for me equal boundaries, and that as it turns out, now that I have just turned 40 is huge for me because one of the first things you had us do was take the Myers-Briggs personality test and I learned for the first time in my life that I was an introvert and shocked myself to death because I was like, but I’m not shy. And as I learned, it doesn’t really have anything to do with that.
It has to do with how you take in information, how you process information, and I think that is the key for me is that yes, I can take in everything that you tell me but I’m not going to digest it the way that you do and I’m not going to take action the way that you do because you’re the extrovert and I’m the introvert. And the way we function is two totally different ways.
So there are lots of extroverts who probably can sail for a while on few systems to no systems because they’re just kind of energized by the interaction with people, but I will say the older you get the harder that gets because your memory starts to fade and you can’t – so you can’t bank on that for too long.
But introverts, I feel like the way that we’re processing everything, I do need to see the lay of the land. I need to gather my thoughts at the end of the day because when they’re all scattered, I know that I’m not giving 100% and then I really feel bad. I feel bad about my work; I feel bad about what I’m giving to clients. I feel like I’m not performing at my best, and so yeah, systems and boundaries were crucial. I can’t stress it enough for helping me transition from am I just going to hang this up and become a librarian or am I really going to dig my heels in and make it work. So fortunately, I made it work, and now that’s great.
Tobi: Yes. So then as life happens, so we go up one rung of the ladder or few and it’s like, it’s kind of like walking upstairs because you get to like, a landing and it settles off and then you’re like, at the bottom of the next set of stairs again, you’re like oh my gosh. And we all go through that and I think that’s definitely kind of what’s happening for a lot of people in the interior design industry right now because there are so many changes and you and I have talked many times and we’ve talked on other podcasts about how we’re on very much the same page about how the industry is changing, and it’s just harder.
The consumers change, and what I love about that and it’s where you and I are connecting all over again and getting excited again about this is the really kind of need for sure, it’s a need, but even more to me the opportunity for us to let go a little bit of some of the identities we’ve had about ourselves and our businesses and that there’s one way or a certain way to run a business, and we’re both – I have been now for three or four years and when I created Design You and you’re kind of on a similar path now of like, what’s important to me, what do I want to talk about, how can I help people, how can I serve.
And one of the ways that you’re really, really passionate in serving other people right now is this very topic of introverts versus extroverts running their business, right?
Rachel: Right. Specifically, creative introverts because there are lots of introverts who are very successful engineers because they go to work, they put their head down, they do their work, they go home. It’s a completely different thing to be a creative business owner and also an introvert because how many times have you heard a designer say, “But I’m not a salesperson.”
Well, that’s that creative person in them thinking I just want to create, I want to play with fabrics, I want to play with color all day long, I’m not a sales person, it’s not my thing, it’s not my thing. And then also introverts kind of have that idea too. We spend so much time in our minds and in our intellect thinking through things that it’s almost like we convince ourselves that we’re not experts when we actually are because we’re critical I guess – I don’t want to be too negative, but it’s sort of just the voice in your head.
Exactly, I’m trying to do it right now. The voice in your head is kind of telling you like, but do you really know that kind of thing? So to be an introvert and a creative and take on this mountain of building a business, where you are the face of the business, you are the ideas of the business, you are the person networking for the business, you’re the person bringing the business in, you’re the person maintaining the business, it’s a lot. It’s a whole lot.
And like I said, there are coaches out there who are set up to just sort of coach “business” but this is a completely different thing. And I will say working with you has been great for me because you have the big ideas that I’ve sort of struggled with that now I’m starting to get there on my own I guess maybe because I’ve had limited resources when I first started and I had worked for someone before who I just kind of tried to replicate what she had done although I knew I didn’t think it worked.
And kind of branching out and realizing like, I will never forget the Designer MBA that you taught that I came to. You said the thing is, when you’re a goal driven person, once you achieve something, it’s not like you just relax. Then there’s going to another thing that comes along that you’re going to want to get to that thing and then check that thing off your box, and that’s exactly how it is.
Not to say I conquered interior design, but I absolutely built the business that I wanted and it’s very successful and I’m incredibly blessed and I get to go home and enjoy the fruits of my labor and have a really nice life. But then you do kind of feel like is this it? Oh, okay.
Tobi: Yeah, I heard Tony Robbins talking about this not too terribly long ago. I think it was a little but older of a podcast and I think he was on the Tim Ferris show or something. Probably last summer. And I really did – I’m 47 so maybe 44ish, when I thought I’d already – kind of like you accomplished a lot of things and then I was like, okay, I’m going to go to this next level, I’m going to pitch myself for all these product lines, which I was successful at, but then I kind of just got myself back on the hamster wheel of the achieving and all that kind of stuff.
So at that time, I was trying – it’s exhausting, again, and whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, when you are a high achiever and you’re driven and a goal setter like that, it’s easy to get yourself kind of striving and again, just on that treadmill. So I remember I was listening, I was trying to find some content, I was talking to a therapist, I was like, what does this look like for me?
And I remember I was listening to Tony Robbins say that one of the problems with a lot of high achievers and he used Andre Agassi as an example because he had coached him and then he hit a slump and so he was number one in the world and then he hit a slump and I would assume this is the same exact situation that could be said about somebody like Tiger Woods or other athletes that did the same thing, and he said the problem is you have this vision for where you want to go. Like, be number one, or get published on the cover of a magazine, maybe for us, or get a product line or whatever.
And you’re striving for that and it seems like the ultimate, and then you get there and you’re like, now what? And he says so many people, even these people with these gigantic visions never really thought about what was going to happen after that because that was everything was to get to that either level of money or accomplishment or reward or Agassi to be the best in the world.
And I could so relate to that and what it started me realizing is that – and I’ve spoke to somebody else that’s on the podcast that’s going to be probably a week or two before yours, Whitney English, we were kind of having the same conversation that I think maybe a lot of us grew up thinking that there’s like, one path and you’re kind of going to be on it your whole life. And what I now know is like, there’s multiple seasons to our lives.
Rachel: Yes, I’m a big fan of seasons, Tobi.
Tobi: And it’s okay to get to like, the end of a season and it’s not like that we want to throw interior design out on its head and never ever do it again. Some days we might want that, but for the most part, it’s part of who we are, but then it’s totally okay to kind of stand where you are, what mountain you’ve reached to the top of and then go okay, now which mountain do I want to climb.
And what lights me up now and what’s fun now and what do I not want to do anymore. And I think that’s kind of what we’re talking about. So you’re kind of looking at your business, I’ve been doing this to my own business, and I think it’s such a perfect time in the world, in history, with the internet and the way social media is for us to start bringing in other passions, other interests, other ideas into who we are as a person and a personal brand, and we can do other things and talk about other things, and it not be totally weird and flaky and irrelevant.
And one of the things you’re really talking about, which has completely sucked me in because I think it’s so interesting is this idea that our society and our world is really sort of designed for extroverts. So whether you’re talking to interior design clients who are introverts and who feel like maybe they’ve been run over by more extroverted interior designers accidentally, not like it was on purpose. Or introverted business owners like, you have a lot to say on this topic and I want to talk about. So tell me about that because I agree, I am an extrovert, but you and I kind of know that I’m probably actually what’s called an ambivert, which is half and half.
Rachel: I think you’ve become more that since I’ve known you because when I first met you, I was like, this woman is a robot, I don’t know how she does it. I love her company but I’m exhausted when I’m around her. It’s just like, idea, idea, idea, idea, I couldn’t even take notes fast enough. But I think you’ve definitely – and I do think that kind of does happen with age for a lot of people is you’re very driven and although you don’t lose your drive, the way you want to pursue it changes kind of as you get older.
I 100% am of the belief that the world essentially is set up for extroverts to succeed. If you go back to high school, the most popular kids in class are the extroverts and the introverts are the ones kind of on the sidelines. I was an introvert in high school. I had lots of friends and I had a great time in high school and I had fun, but my group of friends were always like, on the second rung of the popularity tier where we were the funny ones, sort of in the back making comments about everything and you had to sit close to us to hear what we were saying.
Whereas the cheerleaders or the jocks or whatever, those were all the people kind of making the stuff happen and we just sort of observed and commented, and I think I told you I really – my dream job would have been to have been like, a comedy writer on a sitcom because I feel like that was just my life.
But then if you take it to entertainment, reality TV competition shows, those are set up for extroverts to succeed. The idea that you would throw me into a situation without any of the tools that I need and go design this space and then build everything that needs to go in it in the next hour, I would literally just sit there and cry. I would be like; I can’t do this. I don’t have enough time to think, I don’t have enough time to gather the resources that I need.
I am not a – and I have gotten very comfortable saying that to my clients where if we’re in a meeting and they’re like, what about this, what about this, what about this, I am totally fine now saying I don’t know right now, let me think about it and get back to you. Because I don’t want to just throw an answer out there that I don’t really believe in.
So I think the difference is extroverts will make a lot of decisions based on external feedback, and so the thing that introverts are going to struggle with is being forthcoming and being direct. I will give you a perfect example. My goal this year is to say what I want from people because I just turned 40 and this is a new day.
My friends – one of my friends who’s a designer here in Baton Rouge, his house is being photographed for our local magazine and he wanted me to come over last night and help them kind of get it ready for photography. And so I was at an appointment late in the day and he goes, hey, we’re picking up flowers, do you want us to pick up something for you to eat or do you want to grab something on your way?
And my first answer I texted back was whatever’s easiest for you, and then I thought, no. So I texted him back and I said no, my goal this year is to say what I want. It would be great if you could pick something up for me, I’m not picky. And I was like, god, that felt so good. It’s so nice to just be direct about what I want. I’m not going to hurt anyone’s feelings and I’m not going to come across as rude because actually, you’re making that person’s life easier too.
Because if you kick the ball back to them, they’ve literally just given you the two options. We will either pick something up for you or you can pick something for yourself. What do you want? So that’s kind of like, a new day almost for me. I’m so used to kind of putting my needs to the side and letting other people’s needs take center stage, and of course, part of that is because of what we do for a living.
It’s ultimately the client does need to be satisfied and happy and elated at the end of a project, but transitioning into the idea that introversion is a big part of who I am, it really started to make me even consider should I start to market to introverted design clients as well, because I mean, we do a great job of vetting clients now. That was something I struggled with in the beginning, but even now, we do end up with some extroverted clients.
In the beginning I have to sort of figure out how are we going to work with them, and it does take a lot of management on our part to get them to understand, no, this is the system we use to communicate. We don’t text with clients, which I know shocks everybody to death. But I can’t do it because for me to accomplish anything during a day, I have got to achieve very deep focus. And so a text message on my phone is so disruptive to me. It’s like, the day might as well be over.
Tobi: I love that. I mean, and I know what you’re saying because you’ve told me, you’re like, if there’s a text message over there, I can’t just say I’ll think about that later. It’s like, it is eating you alive until you stop what you’re doing and go respond to it, right?
Rachel: Yes, it is, and there were definitely times where I didn’t tell clients this or they would be a referral from another client from years ago who I only had a cellphone then and they gave them that number. And so finally, in 2017 I was like, we’re not texting with clients anymore and we sent out a notice to all of our clients.
In order for us – and really, it is in order for us to serve them better. We are not going to text with you anymore because so much can get lost. Text conversations can get very jumbled very quickly and an email thread is so much easier to follow. And I know a lot of people are like, oh my god, my clients would never allow that, and I’m like, you know what, guess what, they do because you call the shots really. It’s your business.
And at the end of the day, if it means they’re going to get better service from you, then you have to draw that line. If you don’t mind texting, do it, but I couldn’t handle it.
Tobi: I love it. I agree with you. We text to say like, hey, I’m almost to your house and I’m lost, or I’m going to be 10 minutes late. But we had a situation or two where we were burned because one of my team members was texting and someone approved or didn’t approve something in text message and then they didn’t have a copy of it and we’ve had a policy for a while that if you did text, you had to at least take screenshots of the texts and email them to yourself and then follow up with that as an attachment to an email per your text message earlier, we decided x, y, or z.
Rachel: See, that’s already making me tired.
Tobi: Exactly, so why not? I love that. I love that. And you’re absolutely right. And if you have a structure and the reason behind it, whether clients like it or not, they usually don’t push back a whole lot when you can show them why it’s as much for their protection as yours.
Rachel: Absolutely. Well, and the other thing is so structuring just communication is one system that we use, the way that we communicate with our clients. And then on top of that, structuring our days, systemizing our days. Mondays we don’t take any appointments. That is our in the office day that we work on high-level goals for the entire week, getting ourselves ready.
I usually make a master task list at the end of the previous week so that we know what we’re working on when we get to work the next week. And then we’re scheduling out anybody that we can be doing something else while we’re waiting on an answer from them. That all happens on Mondays. And then Tuesdays through Thursdays is when we’ll take appointments, but we don’t take any appointments after 3pm because Emily has to go pick her kids up from school and I want to go exercise.
So if we are at 5:30 sitting in traffic, I’m going home and I’ve blown my goal for the day of going to the gym. And then Fridays I decide if I want to come to work on Fridays or if I don’t. That was something that I decided for myself in 2016. I went through a divorce, which was my choice and it was the right decision, and I’m happy to report that he and I are friends now, so it’s not a sad story. It was a good decision.
But I needed that day for personal stuff. That’s when I would go to my therapy appointments and that’s when I would go get a massage or just things for myself that were to take care of me because again, I had put everyone else’s needs ahead of mine for so long and I needed to take care of myself.
So Fridays, if I feel like I need to come in on Friday I will go ahead and schedule things on Fridays. If I feel like I need that day, I’ll go ahead and take Fridays off. But as far as this office is concerned, Rachel doesn’t work on Fridays. Even if I come in and I am not here – I’m using a lot of air quotes today. But it’s again, boundaries. Just setting boundaries.
And it’s just unbelievable to me. People are like, they’ll send me an email, I know you won’t see this email until Monday but I wanted to go ahead and – and I think well, you know, let me think about this. My dentist’s office is closed on Fridays, my GP’s office is closed on Fridays. I have so many other – I just work around their schedule. I don’t know why dermatologists are so hard to get in to see but I’ve been seeing mine since I was a child.
And every time I call, even if I’m like, I think I have hives, they’re like, her next appointment is in a month. I’m like, can she do anything for me over the phone? Because I am broken out in welts everywhere. Most people will just wait.
Tobi: Well, you don’t have a choice, or you can go somewhere else, which is fine. You don’t have to work with them. And I love that you’re listening and introverted or extroverted, but especially the introverted piece of that, that you’re really honoring that. One of the things that you tell me that I loved is you said you know, I want people to see that being an introvert is not a disability. It’s not something wrong with them.
Rachel: It is not. No.
Tobi: It’s not like being an extrovert is preferred. Sometimes it looks like it’s preferred in our industry, and I was sending you some stuff the other day in a text message not about work that was like, I just saw something because I believe myself to by an ambivert, which means you’re kind of half and half, and the reason I think that about myself is I can be very extroverted with people like, as far as giving presentations and really pouring myself out, but then I have to go back and be completely by myself to fill myself back up.
And sometimes my family, my husband and my daughter are very social and they may not put themselves out in as big of a way as me. In some ways, my husband is definitely an introvert, but they want to be social all the time and they think I’m so antisocial because if I give and pour out too much of me in podcasts and live calls and client meetings and talks, I literally have to have weekends or days during the week where I do exactly what’s right for me, and that’s kind of what you’re talking about.
And I keep a very similar schedule as you. Mondays and Fridays are days to start the week and end the week, including some personal stuff, and everything else has to figure out how to fit in between that, or it has to be delegated or I have to make a decision not to do it or something. And there are ways to get things done without you doing it all.
Rachel: Oh, 100%, and that’s hard for most people I think, whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert.
Tobi: Right. What I was saying is I was texting you something that said I can’t remember exactly the statistics, but it was basically in a sentence saying introverts are very successful and ambiverts were the most successful at whatever this one particular trait or thing was that I was looking at, and extroverts were the least in this big study.
Rachel: I think it was sales actually, that introverts actually are the best, which is surprising.
Tobi: I think it said ambiverts maybe or – either ambiverts or introverts were the best and then extroverts were the least effective at sales, which was so fascinating and the opposite of what you would think. I’ll try to find that article actually and link it in the show notes because I’m sure people are going to be like, what’s that article?
Rachel: Yeah. People need to read. I think it’s interesting too because – so I had a therapy appointment yesterday and I was telling her that I’d just gone to this event and I spoke and she was like, “Rachel, that doesn’t make you so nervous?” And I’m like, it really doesn’t. I said people think because you’re introverted the idea of getting up in front of a room full of people and speaking is just – I’m like, you’d rather do anything, and it’s really not because it’s a subject.
I know the subject backwards and forwards. I know exactly – and not to mention it was a room full of kindred spirits. It was all interior designers. And so I feel like those are my people and I can speak directly to them, and I know it’s not going to just fall on deaf ears. But ask me to get up and sing in front of a room full of people and no thank you please. That’s not in my wheelhouse at all.
Tobi: But being an introvert, like you said earlier, does not mean that you’re shy. I mean, you could be a shy introvert, but they don’t go hand in hand and people think that that’s what it means, but it really just means the way you process information, the way you like to gather and maybe organize information before you take a lot of actions. And where a lot of times extrovert – and this is one of the extrovert qualities I do have because I test as an extrovert is I like to think out loud and talk out loud.
And when I had one of my former team members, which you know, we would joke because she said I would call her and be like, hey, I need to run this idea by you and I want your feedback. And she’s like okay, which she knew what this was going to be like. And she says I would go, “So I was thinking I was going to do this and I’m thinking about that, and maybe now I’ve decided I want to do this, and actually, I have clarity on it because I really like – okay yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing. Okay, thank you so much.”
And she said she would literally not say a word. Sometimes she may even put the phone down while I’m talking because she’s typing or doing something else. But I just needed to process my thoughts out loud like a sounding board and if she did have an idea of course she would share it with me and she had great ideas and we’re still friends, and my mom’s kind of the same way as her. My mom actually tests as an extrovert but she kinds of plays that role for me too and the difference is that I process everything by talking about it and you process everything in your own head.
Rachel: Absolutely. We will have thought about every possible solution and dismissed every idea we think is not going to work, and we will have a fully formed thought, idea, whatever, before speaking to anybody about it.
Tobi: You mean an introvert will do that.
Rachel: An introvert will do that. Yes. It’s just we’re so in our heads. I don’t even know – I can’t stress it enough. We’re using our own internal filtering system, that’s the best way to describe it because I described it to my therapist as that yesterday. She kept saying you’re so creative, and I kept saying, I know that you think that but really, I’m not. And she’s like, yes you are, that makes me so upset when you say that, and I said no, I don’t want you to get upset because the truth is I’m really not – put a blank piece of paper in front of me and I’ll just – you’ll have the same blank piece of paper the next day.
I cannot create from nothing, and I think truly creative people, it comes from somewhere inside of them. I am someone who can take in the information, so whether it’s something for my business or something for my client, I can take all of that in and then it becomes a filter. So for clients, it’s going through fabrics and knowing I want velvet, I want this color, I want this texture, I want this brand, I want this price point.
So those are all some sort of external I guess stimuli that I’m looking at that I need to filter through all of that, and then that weeds out so many of the options because basically it’s Tetris. I’m building my own – like this little block fits here, this little block fits here. And so it is a way of creating but I don’t necessarily think of myself as – I have never said I am the most creative interior designer. I’m not. I know that I’m not.
But it’s for sure my own internal filter that’s taking in all this external data and that’s how I’m going to make my mind up about it. And to talk through it would – I would get so lost in the woods like I just did trying to explain it just now.
Tobi: You’re like, if I could have just mapped this whole thing out in my head first and then told you all about it, it would have been way more clear.
Rachel: I see the picture of it in my head. I’m doing my hand like a funnel over here, but it’s true. And so that’s why I like when clients are like, when are we going to look at fabrics, and I’m like oh, slow down silver, I’m going to look at fabrics and I’m going to bring you fabrics that I like. We’re not going to do this together because it would A, exhaust me, we wouldn’t be productive. I would feel like I needed to be very diplomatic and on because obviously, not to be rude, but I’m better at this than you are, so you’re going to come to me with some ideas that are probably not exactly what is going to fit for your project whether it’s the price point, the way it functions, whatever.
And that’s why you hire someone who is an expert is because we can weed out all of the stuff that is ground, we don’t even need to cover. We don’t even need to look at that stuff. And so yeah, for your business, as a business owner, it’s the same thing. So your business is part of who you are and I sort of think of my business as one environment and the rest of my life as another thing, and that’s a boundary thing.
And I have to have my business exist in its own little space so that when I go home, I can truly not think about it, not stress about it, not wake up in the middle of the night freaking out over something because that was happening for a long time. I stayed on a level of stress, it was horrible, and it was because I didn’t have any systems in place and I didn’t really have an order of doing things. I was just kind of letting the clients call the shots.
And so making decisions that either – whether they’re personally beneficial to you or professionally beneficial to your business, that’s what’s going to help you sustain moving forward. You can build your business as big as you want it to be, but you have to ask yourself is this going to take a personal toll on me or is this professionally something that I don’t really want to do.
I just got asked to do a room in a show house later this year and I kind of felt like it wasn’t the right thing and the more I thought about it, I just was like, you know what, no, it’s not going to work. Every time I think about it, I get a knot in my stomach and I don’t feel prepared and it’s a pop-up opportunity and it’s not something I had planned on, and so I said no.
And the Rachel of four or five or six years ago would have moved hell and mountains to get this room in this show house because it just seemed like such an incredible opportunity. But now, knowing myself as well as I do and knowing sort of what my personal capabilities are and knowing what the capabilities of my business are, it wasn’t a good opportunity.
And so it stung a little bit to have to like, let that go by, but there will be other opportunities that are better fits, and that’s fine with me. I’m to the point now where I don’t have to yes to every single thing that comes my way. In fact, you shouldn’t say yes to everything that comes your way.
Tobi: Absolutely. Another of my favorite quotes is by Warren Buffet and he said the difference between successful and very successful people is very successful people say no to almost everything. And I think that’s so, so true. So on that note, when you’re talking about systems and boundaries, which have been so revolutionary for you and for me, what do you think is the difference for an introvert as far as systems and boundaries and decision-making go versus an extrovert?
Because I believe we all need those, but maybe you kind of think and it’s convincing when we’ve talked about it and I may agree with you that introverts maybe even do need that stuff more than the extrovert.
Rachel: Well, I think for me and from all – I’m reading so many books about introversion now that it’s all a jumble in my head, but I think the thing that I can sort of sum it up for you in is that introverts really do have an intimate relationship with fear because we do spend so much time in our thoughts and it’s not that we’re catastrophizing everything but we truly want to know what are all the possible outcomes of this.
So when you don’t have a system in place that you know this way works, every day is a new day and every client gets a new experience, and you’re reinventing the wheel every single day. And that for me was the biggest thing was really just constantly like oh my god, are they going to get aggravated because I didn’t call them back? Well now I have systems in place for all of that.
We know that on such and such day at this time, this is when Rachel’s contacting all the clients for the week so that they know where the status is of their project. That’s such a small thing but it’s huge to the client and it’s huge to you because it’s a boundary that you’ve set. You’re not constantly fielding phone calls or emails from clients because they know she’s going to contact me in a couple of days.
And the fear, because we’re in our minds, it’s constantly bouncing – it’s like an echo chamber, and then you just don’t take any action because you’re crippled by all of the what ifs. And so systemizing and setting boundaries and having truly – I can’t get a client from A to C unless we stop at B first, having that system in place means I’m still in control of all of the moves that we’re taking to get a client to a finished project, and that’s major for someone like me.
I don’t know if it’s all introverts but I do feel like the majority of the ones I’ve spoken to, they’re like yes, oh my god yes, that’s exactly what I need. I feel like I’m drowning in work, and I’m like, put a system in place. That’s going to save you.
Tobi: Yeah, as you were talking, I could see it and think about it from my perspective as an extrovert versus yours and what was coming to my mind is that without the systems, you’re going to have the chaos no matter. So without the systems, an introvert or extrovert, you’re going to have your clients mad at you, you’re going to have people very unhappy with the process, you’re going to do a poor job, you’re going to damage your reputation.
But when thinking about the conflict resolution piece of it, what was coming to my mind is that as an extrovert, even though it’s uncomfortable, we’re more likely to talk it out loud and to work through the problem, which I’ve had to do many times back in the days that I had a lot of growing pains and I didn’t have systems in place, and it was painful, but I was able a lot of times in the moment to work through the conflict resolution because I would talk it out loud to the customer.
Not being like, confrontational because that doesn’t help, but literally just talking and asking questions and being direct. And I can see that as an introvert, if the client is very upset with you and they’re coming down on you with all of this information, you want to take all of that and you want to go back with it, even though it’s equally painful and you want to think through every single word they said and you want to think through whether or not you have a rebuttal or a comment, or if you agree with them.
Rachel: I can tell you, listen, all the introverts right now are literally sitting here going, oh, I have to write my thoughts down. If you’ve ever been in a situation where a client has dumped on you and you feel like all of those negative things are rolling around in my head, the first thing you do is go write the email that you should have written or what you should have said kind of thing because you can’t get your thoughts together in the moment.
Tobi: And I’ve heard many, many people say, oh, I wish I would have said this, I wish I would have said that, and usually I’m not saying that because I did say it in the moment. I mean again, I don’t like to be confrontational but I’m usually saying, I hear what you’re saying but this or I absolutely agree with you but I can see now and I hadn’t really thought of it that way before is that it’s not that you might be intimidated, but an introvert is more prone to want to be prepared when you do respond, and so you’re not going to be doing it on the fly.
And I can see how then systems that avoid more of the chaos, it’s going to keep from putting you in that position so often that you’re having to work in a way that’s not consistent with your personality type.
Rachel: Absolutely, 100%.
Tobi: That makes so much sense.
Rachel: It’s kind of like I can liken this to when I was going through my divorce, the reason I started to go to a therapist even though I knew it was the right decision was because I just wanted to know what to prepare for. What are the emotions that are going to happen, I’ve never divorced anyone before, I don’t know what it’s like. And so it’s the same thing. Again, I want to know the 40,000 foot view of what this is going to look like, and is it a straight line or is it a sort of meandering line where we’re going to circle back through some stuff.
And fortunately, in business, it doesn’t have to be emotional like a divorce is because a divorce you do circle back to a lot of stuff. But in business, systemizing it and saying okay, the however many steps it takes us to get you to a finished project is this many steps, it’s probably a million. But you can tell your client the highlight points.
We’re going to meet your times before we have your finishes selected, we’re going to meet three times before you have your furnishings selected. We’re going to meet this many times while the project is going on. And you can build what that map looks like for your client, then they kind of know what to expect, and I think that’s the thing that I didn’t realize for so long is give the client a little bit of credit. They’re not trying to make your life miserable, they just don’t know what’s happening.
And they don’t mean to be like, constantly on you, it’s just they don’t know what this process is. And in a little while if it starts to feel like maybe you also don’t know what this process is, that’s when the trouble starts.
Tobi: Yeah, they start to lose trust and then you start to vilify them, and any time there’s a villain there’s a victim, which means you’re the victim and they’re the villain.
Rachel: Yeah, and that’s not a good place to be, and I do think that’s where I was when I first started – when I first met you and when I first started to come to your courses. I stayed so frustrated because I was like, I just really want my clients to go away and let me do what I do and then just let me come back to them when I’m ready, and you can’t do that.
I mean, they’ve given you money and they expect to hear from you, they expect there to be communication in the meantime. And another huge thing that I learned from you was charging what you’re worth and not apologizing but also what exactly are they getting for that number and when you have a system in place that you can smoothly present to them as part of your marketing, as you’re getting someone to agree to a contract, if you can walk them through that upfront, I mean, we close so many clients because I have taken the time to write out what our system is and to write out what the touch points of a project are and present that to them.
And I will say, you know, some of these things may or may not apply to your project, but this will give you a good overview of how we work. And what I love now is the feedback we get from potential clients whenever they’ve been referred by previous clients is oh my gosh, we just heard you were so organized and that’s what we want. My friend tried to help me and it was whatever, but now we’re ready to – we really want to get this done.
Well, that’s great because I want to get it done too. I don’t want – you don’t need me to do it the way your friend would do it because what’s the point? If you’re paying a professional, a professional should do it better, and so that’s how I do it better.
Tobi: Well, and as you were talking about that, one of the things that I could see would be so helpful, whether the client is an introvert or an extrovert, but especially if they’re an extrovert, in that sales process, onboarding process, closing the sale, conversion, all that kind of stuff, if you have a system in place and you know what you’re walking them through to show them what you’re going to be doing, there’s a pretty predictable kind of set of questions that they’re probably going to ask you, right?
And if we can do anything and everything, who knows what their questions are going to be. But if you’re showing them there’s structure, there’s a system or a program that we use and we’re going to take you through all of this, then as an introvert, now I’m thinking about this – see, this is why I think you’re so smart and I love when people bring up other perspectives for me.
I can see, it’s making sense to me that you will feel much more confident in those moments where you can’t be like, I’ll call you back tomorrow and tell you the answer to that because you don’t want to lose the sale. But you are – just like you said with your therapist and you wanted to know what was going to be coming with the divorce, you know what’s coming with any type of client for the most part.
What their objections are going to be, what their questions are going to be, because you created the system and you’ve put people through it so you have experience with what people are going to ask, but even if you don’t, you can go through it yourself and go okay, well at each point, what are they probably going to ask about this, and then you’re prepared to answer the question on the fly, not like a typical introvert would be prepared to do.
Rachel: That’s right. You’re not put on the spot. I mean, every introvert’s worst nightmare is to be called on in class to solve a math problem. Like, I’m not – in fact I saw this meme yesterday on the internet that said this guy next to me was called on in class to answer a question and he panicked and said I’m not dumb, I’m just panicking, and I felt that and the guy next to him felt that, and the whole world felt that.
And I’m like yeah, hello, being put on the spot is the worst. But really, if you think about what we’ve done, not just systemizing how we take clients through the actual project, we’ve actually systemized how we take them through the sales process. We actually have – it’s called a moves management process where you move them from A to B, B to C, and then D is them saying yes to your contract and signing your proposal and giving you their deposit.
And again, that is because that is how I have maintained structure and boundaries in this business. If every client got to come in and decide I only need you to pick one paint color, I need two pillows for my living room, and maybe in a year we’re going to redo our master bathroom, but do this now because we’ll definitely use you for that, I already know A, no, and B, the promise of bigger work down the line, that’s a fool’s errand. Do you know what I mean? You’re not going to actually get anything from that.
Tobi: A bird in a hand, so that bird that’s out there in three years that may or may never fly by, no. That’s a no.
Rachel: No, it’s not going to happen. And so that again, it’s as you structure your business and as you learn who your ideal client is and as you learn what is your sweet spot, I have a very good friend here in Baton Rouge that’s a designer and she’s like, girl, I don’t know how you do those whole houses, that is not what I want to do. I want to do one room at a time and I just only want to do that room and I don’t want to think about anything else.
And I’m like, I mean, I’ll do the one room at a time and I enjoy that but I feel like I really do excel at the whole house. What a payoff for the client. They get to walk in and just live in their house and never think about it again until they want to redo something in 20 years.
But knowing exactly what your goals are and what your aspirations are, you can’t keep saying yes to those little things. Just pick me two pillows and one paint color, if what your big goal is is to do a whole home, you have to eventually start saying no to that kind of stuff. And then if you have the systems in place or if you’ve taken the time to write out what your process is and you can tell these people those things, maybe you do land some of those clients because they don’t even know that’s what you do.
They may not even realize that’s what you’re capable of. I took one of my first clients ever out to lunch after I had come to Designer MBA with you and I sat down and I told her what full-service design was because up until that point, I had never actually been able to perform a full-service project for her. It was a lot of like, the two pillows or the can you just reuse all of this furniture that we had in our old house and put it in the guest bedroom and make it look good kind of stuff.
I was doing it because I knew the living room needed to the redone, the dining room needed to be redone, and her master bedroom needed to be redone, and my goal was I’ll do all these little things with the hopes of when she’s ready she’ll give me these projects too. Well, that didn’t happen because she went to visit someone and walked into a furniture store and loved everything there and they put everything on their truck and drove it across state lines and put it all in her house.
And then the next time I saw her she was like, oh, I have a check for you for your balance, but you need to come see the house, it’s done, it looks amazing. And I was like, what? And she kind of told me what happened and so then I get there and I mean, it was amazing. It was flat out…
Tobi: You’re like, it was gorgeous.
Rachel: I’m like, oh my god. I mean, it stung. I’m not going to lie. I just was like, I mean, I wish that I could have been the one to do this for you because this was kind of where I was hoping we would go, but I learned a lesson, which I was I had never stopped to explain to her what I actually was capable of. I was letting her just tell me what she wanted and I never fully said yeah, I’ll do that but what I really want to talk to you about is your living room because don’t you agree that this furniture’s got to be changed?
It obviously had to be changed. I never said that. And that was just me not being able to like, say what I wanted and so I took that in and I created a service from it called the One Week Room Rescue and exactly what happened with her is exactly what we will do. We will come in on a Monday, we will look at the room, we will take everything out on approval from all of our great buddies at all the stores we’ve made relationships with.
We’ll install it on Friday, you can live with it for the weekend and see what you like and then on Monday they’ll come load up anything that you don’t want. And that again, that was a game changer for me because if we sold two of those a month, I was making more than I had made the year before.
So it’s again, the menu of services, the value ladder, seeing – get in where you fit in kind of thing. If somebody’s asking you for this, do it but do it on a level that far exceeds their expectations. I could have done this with her from day one. I just didn’t know. I didn’t ask.
Tobi: And the introvert of you was probably in your head about all that stuff and just thinking, surely when she’s ready she’ll let me know.
Rachel: Yeah. Walking through that living room with blinders every time going oh god, I hate this furniture, when is she going to let me do this? Whereas I could have just said hey, do you ever have goals for redoing this room because this is the room everybody sees, why don’t we talk about that? Why did I just do that? Well, because little introvert thought I’m going to prove myself and she’s going to think it’s awesome and then she’s going to hand me this big thing at the end. No, that’s not how that works.
Tobi: That’s such a good story. So helpful. Well, this is so – I mean, honestly, I’m sitting here thinking we’ve been going for almost an hour and I like to keep them close to that but it’s so good, I could keep talking about this for three more hours. But before we wrap up, I do want you to speak to how an introvert not just survives but really excels and thrives in the current extroverted world of social media. Because you recently told me a trick that you have as an introvert that I just think is so genius.
Rachel: Remind me what it was because I don’t know. I’m old, Tobi.
Tobi: Remember when you were like, the thought of talking to all of my followers was terrifying to me as an introvert? So talk about that because you do a beautiful job on social media and I listen to everything you say, and that’s where your comedy writer stuff comes out because you’re so funny in your stories and you literally have me laughing out loud.
Rachel: I’ve written and rewritten that script probably 100 times.
Tobi: You’ve written those jokes that looks spontaneous but you’ve actually been working on your routine for a month.
Rachel: I legit have a list of notes in my phone of like, funny things I’ve thought that I’m going to use at some point. And every time I have another one, I put it in there. I’m like, when am I going to use that? That’s so funny.
Tobi: That’s so genius. Okay, I’m glad to know that, but that was not the secret that I was talking about or the tip, which that’s a great one too. But how does an introvert, because there are so many people that are out there going I know I should be on social and everything in the extroverted world tells me that stories are the place to be and if I’m ever going to grow my business and get clients I have to be there, but the thought of that is literally paralyzing for people, right?
Rachel: And it was for me too. Social media, I didn’t know how to use it really whenever I first started using it and I have learned, and then they throw stories on there and I’m like, what? Another thing? I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to be on camera, like no.
Tobi: Not only another thing but a really intimate thing that’s not all perfectly orchestrated and you don’t hit publish on it. You’re supposed to actually turn the camera on and even on yourself and start talking, right?
Rachel: And just start talking, yeah. And that was like, no, I can’t do that. So I finally was like, you know what, realizing who my ideal client was helped me land my ideal client over and over and over again, and like you, I have one person who I feel like is my ideal client in every sense of the word, including just her personality.
She is hilarious, she doesn’t take anything too seriously, she’s a lot like I am where it’s just you know, at the end of the day this is just design and we’ll live to tell about it tomorrow. It’s not going to be the end of the world. That’s the type of person I need to talk to. That’s the type of person I want to reach. She values organization because she’s a professional and she doesn’t have a lot of time, but at the end of the day, she’s going to be really understanding when something doesn’t go right.
And like, isn’t that everybody’s dream person to work with? So on top of all the other criteria, that’s just her personality. Well, I started to think every time I’m with her, we crack up laughing and we get each other’s humor, so what if I just start to write every post like I’m talking to her? So I don’t write every single one like I’m talking to her but a lot of them are just like I’m having a conversation with her, and some of them are funnier than others, but really, I have her in mind every single time.
When I pull a picture up that I’m going to post on Instagram or Facebook or whatever, I am already thinking about what would – I’m going to say her name – what would Meredith want to know? What would she want to know about this room? What would she find interesting? What are the questions she would ask me about this space?
Because she loves design but she also knows it’s not in her wheelhouse, and so she’s fascinated by it. She just – I would love to do what you do and I’m like, you think that. It’s a whole world that you don’t know about. And then on stories, that, I think once I crossed this threshold of I’m just talking to Meredith, then I thought like, would Meredith think this is funny? Because I’ll do a story if I think Meredith is going to find it funny. That is truly – she’s my audience. She’s my best audience, honestly.
Tobi: I love this concept. This is one of the smartest things I’ve ever heard about social media that you’re like, okay, if this one actual human being that does happen to be my ideal client and she’s a real person, if she was the only person who watches my stories, if she would think it was valuable or funny, then I absolutely can leap in with both feet to this.
Rachel: Yeah. And being yourself like, your website and the image that’s presented to the world may not read as that girl is hilarious. Mary McDonald is another one. Mary McDonald’s website looks amazing. Her work is amazing. she is one of the funniest people in the world, and you don’t know that unless you get to talk to her or when she was on whatever that show as on Bravo, she was hilarious.
And she’s been on Watch What Happens Live with Andy and like, knowing that about her, that makes me like her so much more. Just knowing like, oh my god, she has a sense of humor about all of this, and then I’m like, well then yeah, my ideal client would have a sense of humor about it as well. So speaking to that person specifically, and even if Meredith doesn’t see it, the interaction I get from followers on Instagram when I post a story is unbelievable because people are watching and they love knowing that you’re just human and that you’re real and you know, whatever.
Tobi: And if Meredith misses anything really good, you’re like, hey, why are you not watching my Instagram story? I write it for you and it’s hysterical. That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much as always for being – you’re like me in that we’re both very transparent and I love that you’re willing to share real things, real ideas because that’s where we all grow and become better versions of us, so I appreciate you so much being willing to be so open. Even your little introverted self, and it was just a pleasure, and as always from you, I learned so much and I know I will get so much feedback on this episode.
I mean, I know I will. And especially for my audience because I am an extrovert, I bet there are so often that people in my audience are like, oh Tobi. You even tell me, you’re like, every time that you’re saying like, feel the fear and do it anyway or whatever, you’re like, okay Tobi, that’s a Tobi quote but that’s not a Rachel quote.
Rachel: No, it’s not.
Tobi: It was so helpful and I will definitely talk to you again on this. I have some cool stuff planned for my Facebook community, which I’m going to talk to you about because I think that we might try to do in my free Facebook community some Q&As. Because it’s so fun that with the podcast like, nobody gets to ask you questions, and I want people to be able to ask you questions.
Rachel: Tobi, can I tell you, it’s like you’re a ghost. When you’re listening to a podcast and they’re saying something, you’re like, I need to ask a question about that or I know the answer to that and you feel like you’re a ghost because you can’t say anything. It’s horrible.
Tobi: Exactly, and I agree with you, especially because I am an extrovert and I’m like, oh wait, Tobi has a question. So I have had this up my sleeve and we’re going to start this soon. So by the time this comes out, we’ll probably already have you on the schedule for people to come into my free Facebook community and if you have time, I would love to have you over there because I know that we will have hordes of questions and we’ll probably have to cut people off because they would keep us there all day. So we’ll work on planning that and that will be just fabulous and I know you’ll be a riot. But also super valuable, so let’s do that soon.
Rachel: Awesome, I will.
Tobi: Okay, well thank you and I’ll talk to you by text, hopefully not during the day so I don’t disrupt you, when I see more introvert information I’ll be like, oh, Rachel, I want to text it but she’s going to tell me…
Rachel: No, you can always text me.
Tobi: Okay good, I’m the exception to the rule. Okay, see you later. Bye.
Rachel: Alright, bye.
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So I hope that was as eye-opening as I feel like it’s going to be for so many of you, especially those of you who are introverts and you’ve been wondering what the problem was all these years when you’re living in an extroverted world. So thanks for joining us, I hope you really got a ton of stuff and takeaways from that, and if you really do want the opportunity to talk to Rachel, to ask her questions, then be sure and go to my Design You Podcast community on Facebook. It’s a free community and request to join because we will be telling you in that community very soon about having Rachel and other guests on Facebook Live inside of our community where you can actually interact with, ask questions of the amazing guests that I’m having this year on the podcast.
So go join us in the community and we’ll see you inside and let you know when and exactly what days, what times you can show up and get your questions answered. So thanks for joining us today and I’ll see you again really soon on another episode of The Design You Podcast. Bye for now.
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of The Design You Podcast. And if you’d like even more support for designing a business and a life that you love, then check out my exclusive monthly coaching program Design You at tobifairley.com.
