Episode 286: The Art of Getting Published with Jillian Dinkel of Jillian Dinkel Designs
You are only competing with yourself. In this podcast episode, Fiona chats with Jillian Dinkel of Jillian Dinkel Designs about her journey to building her business. Jillian shares tips on how to get published and emphasizes the need for reflection and constantly setting goals as a business owner. Tune in and get great insights to improve your brand awareness and marketing strategies!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
What led Jillian to start her business
Transitioning and moving to a different country
How Jillian Dinkel Designs started
Jillian's biggest challenges
The confidence, attitude, and goal ambition
Jillian's advice and how to get good media
Tech, tools and resources that helped Jillian
What's next for Jillian Dinkel Designs?
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
“For me, being a lifelong creative person but also someone who is quite practical and organized, and, in addition to the creative side of things, can carry things through and execute things, which is important in interior design, I needed to find my path, my outlet, and my vehicle for what I wanted to create and put out in the world. For me, that ended up being interior design. When I look back at my past, the signs were all there that this was for me but sometimes you can't trace the lines until you look back and it was very much that for me.”
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Welcome to episode 286 of the My Daily Business Coach Podcast. This episode is an interview with an incredible, creative, and courageous small business owner, and I can't wait to get stuck into that, it is a good one. Before we do, I wanted to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians on the lands in which I meet my guests and I record this podcast, which is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
The other thing I wanted to mention and I've mentioned it a few times but to reiterate is we are changing the name to this slightly. We are rebranding. If you see slightly different artwork as the cover for the podcast or if you see slightly different graphics going out, know that it is the same content. You're going to get the same quality of information under a slightly different name. Let's get into our small business interview.
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There are some conversations that you have with people that leave an imprint on you for all sorts of reasons and the first conversation that I had with our guest left a mark and not in some super, huge, and profound way, it was a consult call she had called up about coaching with me. In terms of her knowing exactly what she wanted from her business, exactly what she wanted from coaching, and in this beautifully confident way, that came across. She may not have felt that but I felt it and I have done hundreds of consult calls over the years and this one stood out because of those reasons.
As I had the good fortune to work with our guest, I was her coach for a little while, I saw that time and time again, this confidence and this ability to have real clarity around where she wanted the business to go. I knew that I had to have her on the podcast and I'm excited that I did ask her and then she said yes. This episode is all about how to drive your business forward. My guest is Jillian Dinkel of Jillian Dinkel Designs.
For those who don't know, Jillian Dinkel is an interior designer, she has a design agency based out of Sydney, and they predominantly work on heritage and period homes, mixing old and new heritage and period style with a modern lifestyle. Jillian embodies her brand, she is also classic, cool modern, and edgy but also timeless. There's such a synergy between the work that Jillian does and her as a person. It's been my absolute pleasure to work with her as a coach.
In this episode, we talk about how Jillian got into design, she came from a different career, but also how she has utilized elements of that career and the skills that she had in that previous career to build her brand today. Jillian used to work at Vogue and Condé Nast. She was in charge of organizing these massive international photo shoots with celebrities and travelling over the world. She has brought that into her brand and it is a joy to listen to.
If you are interested in getting media for your own business, that is something that Jillian talks about and knows a lot about, and she's created a course specifically for people in the interiors worlds, and I'm sure it could be used for any small business owner, to get your work into traditional print media. Stick around at the end, you'll learn all about the course details for that. For now, please enjoy my interview with the amazing Jillian Dinkel of Jillian Dinkel Designs.
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Welcome, Jill, to the podcast. How are you?
I'm great. Thank you, Fiona, for having me. I have been loving the podcast and it's such a pleasure to be one of your guests.
I always had you on my list. It's taken a little while to get there but since we work together, I thought, “She has to come on here, a wealth of information and determination in business.” On that note, you had an interesting career before you started your current business. Can you talk us through your career to date and then what led to starting your business?
I started fresh from college in fashion, which also wasn't the direction I thought things would go in. I was going to be a lawyer and then a writer and then life had other plans. I ended up working in the fashion department of a magazine in New York City days after my graduation. For the next 7 or 8 years, I was in New York working in the fashion departments of various magazines at Condé Nast, which was amazing and such fun for a twenty-something girl in New York.
I got to travel the world and see many incredible places, destinations, hotels, clothes, people, and inspiring experiences that have become a part of me. I did that and then I met my now husband and we were both looking to get out of New York and ready for something different, a new challenge. We thought maybe we'd moved to LA or Austin or something, not Sydney, Australia, on the other side of the world, it was not exactly on our shortlist.
An opportunity arose through my husband's work several times during our courtship and we decided that we were being called to come so we did. I imagine Australia very naive, I had never been here and I had no idea that even the landscape for my career trajectory was, at the time, a fashion producer doing castings, celebrity bookings, and then organizing fabulous shoots all over the world. That wasn’t such a thing here.
It’s a little different than New York.
I wasn't prepared for it but I must have been in the right place at the right time because there was one job for me here and I happened to have an informational meeting because my editor in New York was friends with the editor here. I met with Vogue one week into being here and then I was working there a few days after that. I joined Vogue and was there for a couple of years doing exactly what I was doing in New York, celebrity casting, models, photo shoots, photographers, makeup artists, and all those things. It’s quite a lot of logistics, budgeting, and working with a lot of different personalities, which, in hindsight, was a great preparation for the job that I do now.
There are so many people thinking, “It sounds like something out of a movie.” Working straight after your graduation in New York City in these big fashion magazines, I worked in fashion magazines but not in New York City, is it the same way that it's portrayed on TV where you have these incredible closets and you can go in and play dress up? Is that completely a fictional thing?
In New York, yes, it's pretty fabulous. I'm not going to lie, it was pretty amazing, incredible experiences, pinch-me moments all the time, and it was a wonderful experience to have at that time in my life. It's also blood, sweat, and tears. I remember vividly working every single day, Saturdays and Sundays included, for two months at a time. I would have breakfast, lunch, and dinner at work because I was at the office during those meal times.
I remember running home to get a shower and then coming back to work. It was a hustle and something that's not sustainable across someone's entire career. At the time, it was such an incredible experience. I saw so much of the world and met incredible people, actors, musicians, and athletes. What an incredible time. I always say dinner party stories for my whole lifetime, thanks to those years. It was wonderful but also susceptible to burnout, which is what happened to me. It was too much and was not sustainable for me beyond the decade that I worked in that industry.
When you came here and landed a job at Vogue within a week, that’s equally like, “What?” When people listen to that. Were you like, “I've gone halfway across the world and I'm in a completely different country, and I'm going into Vogue.” Did you get going or did it take a bit of time to get your head around that? There are lots of people that have a business but there are lots that are still working and maybe even going into a new position at the moment. What was that like?
It was probably a bigger transition moving to an entirely different country. Magazines all work the same, they do. I remember moving here and thinking, “My job is what three departments would be doing in Australia.” That was quite a shock. Probably the most surprising thing was how much Australia gets done with a lot fewer resources in that way.
It’s probably not so much today with magazines being a different landscape than they used to be in publishing as a whole. In Australia, at Vogue, we would turn out this magazine that was beautiful and amazing, it's something I was so proud of, with a skeleton crew compared to the resources that I was accustomed to in New York. That was surprising when I first came here.
I can imagine. It’s funny because we both started in magazines, me in a different type of magazine to you with Vogue and the US. How did you go from working at Vogue in Sydney to creating Jillian Dinkel Designs, which is an incredible business? I can't wait to hear how you explain it. How did you create that and how's it evolved since you launched it?
I left magazines in 2016 to go straight into this industry. There wasn't any gap there. I knew that I was ready for a creative change. A lot of that role at Vogue and in my whole magazine career was creating wonderful opportunities for creatives to be creative like us scouting amazing locations, casting the right kinds of people, makeup, and artist photographers to work together to create a vision that my fashion editor or creative director would have for a season or a story or an actress It was wonderful and it was creative but it probably wasn't creative enough for me.
Even with that much smaller staff, you don't get to ultimately control the outcome of that creative output. They might put a different picture on the cover than the picture that's needed to be on the cover or otherwise a million little decisions that are out of your hand. For me, being a lifelong creative person but also someone who is quite practical and organized, and, in addition to the creative side of things, can carry things through and execute things, which is important in interior design, I needed to find my own path, my own outlet, my own vehicle for what I wanted to create and put out in the world. For me, that ended up being interior design.
When I look back at my past, the signs were all there that this was for me. Sometimes you can't trace the lines until you look back and it was very much that for me. I went back to school, I started interning at the ripe age of 30, and working for other business owners to get a real understanding of the industry, how things are done, and how things are not done. That was an amazing experience. The company I was working for was going in a different direction and I felt that it was my time to strike out on my own so I did.
Jillian Dinkel Designs is an interior design but you also got some other exciting things that you're going to talk about. You are known for a particular type of house and a beautiful style. Was that always part of the strategy for your business? Were you like, “I'm not going to be the interior designer for every single person on every type of budget and every type of house.” Did you go in knowing, “This is what I want to do clearly from the start.”
I always had the end game in mind and the big vision as opposed to the micro steps that you have to walk through to cultivate a following, to cultivate the clients you might want to work with. I took some time at the very beginning to think of who I wanted to ultimately be, who I wanted to ultimately serve, who I was, what I could bring to the table that was different from everybody else, and how I could distinguish myself but also distinguish what makes what I do special. For me, that was period homes.
My studio specializes in heritage and period homes, anything from Georgian Revival, Victorian Federation, and art Deco, that's where I love to live and what I love to do. I started as a terrace house designer, which is still a part of our DNA. We do work on some beautiful terrace house projects but we do run across all those heritage period homes and make sure that we preserve and celebrate those architectural details while adapting them for how we live now, which is in contrast to the lives people were living when these houses were built.
I'm sure people who are reading this were like, “She sounds glamorous. Her life must be 24/7, champagne, sequins, and all of that.” We know that it could be super hard to make a business successful. What have been some of the biggest challenges that you've had to overcome?
It's quite a challenging time, my peers in this industry and lots of other industries as well, this post-Covid time. COVID was hard for all the usual reasons. Now, we are still dealing with this backlog of work and a real struggle to find staff to support us in that work. Trades have been difficult and the incredible increase in material costs has been hard as well.
It's required a different kind of thinking, a more creative, in a way, thinking on how to achieve a look or feeling for our clients, a functional space while trying to maximize the impact of some of these materials to ensure that you're getting the most return on that. It's been a challenge and it's been a different way of thinking, that's for sure.
Like, every new business, in the beginning, it is hard to make those initial attractions out there to find that client who's going to let you show the world what you can do when you don't have a whole lot of examples of your work. For me, particularly being an ex-pat and being new to the industry, it was hard initially to get amazing projects because it is the projects that you get that can propel you to the next level when you get the opportunity to show people what you can do. That leads to the next project and the next project.
I hear this often from all sorts of people, in that space, whether they're landscape architects, people will say, “I've got a lot of work. I just don't want to show that work yet.” I was talking to someone and they're like, “We've got a lot of work but we're moving in a different direction. How do we do that without alienating people who come to us for that work that they've seen?”
You have to be fearless. You have to walk through it if you know where you want to go. For a lot of new business owners, sometimes you do have to take work that maybe doesn't speak to you, isn’t the vision, and have to do it to keep propelling financially forward. That's understandable, especially in the beginning. When you get to a place where you've made a decision, you've stepped out, and this is the direction you're going in your niche, or whatever it is, you do have to white-knuckle it the whole way through at points.
Own it. You mentioned that, at the start, you were known as the terrace house designer, you do heritage and period homes, and art deco. When you got that moniker or that name, were you worried that you were going to be pigeonholed into doing this forever? Did you worry that you were going to run out of clients? Was there any thought like that? Another thing I hear a lot from interior designers is, “I love this but I don't want to just do that because what if then other work comes?” It's similar to what you said, owns it and goes for it. Was there any anxiety around, “Have I put myself into a hole here?”
Other people around me were like, “I don't know if that's the right direction.” For all the reasons you've said, “Won't you get bored of it? Won't you be afraid that there won't be enough work?” There is. There are many beautiful period homes and it's dense what's within that and that's why I love specializing in this world. From those functional things like rising dampness, lack of natural light, or poor flow in the house, we deal with that all the time.
We deal with those issues over and over but no two issues are the same, which is nice and a challenge. Also, it’s beautiful decorative things like the right fireplace for this suburb and era of the home and the right cornice and plaster details. How do we marry that in with some beautiful modern furniture and how do we make sure that it speaks to our clients?
A big aspect of what we do and our philosophy is, what memories do you want to have in this home? How can we make this home the perfect backdrop for those memories? How can we ensure that if you want to be the one who hosts Christmas lunch every year, we can make sure that your dining room is going to equally work well for your little intimate family unit as well as that twenty-person party? Where are we going to put the platters and how are we going to light this space?
There are a million different tiny things that we can do in a home to ensure that those experiences and memories that we want can be fully supported. We all know that you could have an outdoor space but if everything about that outdoor space doesn't make it super easy for you to be outdoors in that area, then you don't do it.
That's true. I love that human connection point, what are the memories you want to make? You see a lot of the sameness out there, “I want this rug and this particular couch.” That doesn't speak to those memories necessarily, it speaks to trends or other things. I love that you bring that into your work and into the way that you deal, manage, work with, and connect with your clients.
It's become apparent as well for anyone that's reading that you're direct in a good way and you've got this confidence. I will always remember when we did our consult call. I was on the freeway and I remember thinking, “This woman knows exactly what she wants and there's no BS.” You knew what you wanted to achieve, why you were coming to coaching and all of that. That's not common, I must say.
A lot of the time, people chit chat and they haven't necessarily thought of all the answers and it's not good or bad but it was something I noticed about you that you are like, “I know exactly where I want to go.” You have this confidence. I don't know if that confidence comes across because I'm Australian and you're American. However, that's also innate in you. I'm wondering, the confidence, attitude, and goal ambition, is that something you've always had? Is that something that your parents had instilled in you? Is that something you've had to learn and nurture?
It’s funny that you say that because I went back to New York and it's been a long time since I've been home. We were having a family dinner and my mom was saying, “I don't know where she comes from.” I'm different from my family. I have always been ambitious as a child, goal-driven, and goal-oriented. It’s not always but for a long time, I believed that anything is possible. Maybe that's the New York aspect of things. I always wanted to be in New York.
Working in New York, the word hustle is not cool or not viewed in a positive light. I view that word differently, I view it quite positively. To me, hustle is putting one step in front of the other toward the ultimate vision you have for yourself and your life. For me, I know what I want and that can change, that changes.
We are human beings who evolve so much throughout our lives so that vision of what the ultimate goal is for me does change and how I want my life to look like and my business to look like and my work to look. I cut my teeth in New York in a competitive and passion-driven industry. I learned a lot. It changed who I am in my mind for the better in my working life. I truly believe anything is possible and anything is achievable if you believe it enough and prepare for it enough and keep working toward it.
I like that you gave the context for the word hustle as well. I am obviously on the other side but I appreciate that. I've lived in London, and London and New York are not the same. Either people love London and don't love New York as much or they love New York and don't love London as much. They're huge cities. I was 21 when I first went but when I went back with my husband, I remember thinking, “I've got a column in the major newspaper here. I've done this and I've done that.”
I came and you are in this city with so much competition. People were like, “Where's Melbourne? I've never even heard of it.” It was like, “I've gone to Oxford and I've worked for this publication.” It was a different level of competition and you had to work hard to get yourself up in any company that you were at. Let alone, I can't even imagine Condé Nast at that time as well.
This comes with time and wisdom, that's what I'm telling myself. In the end, you're only competing with yourself. For me, that's been a big ethos in my working life. I'm not about competition, I'm not competing with anyone. There is enough work, amazing clients, and amazing opportunities for everyone, plus some. I'm all about sharing knowledge and collaborating.
Since starting this business, I have shared office space with other female designers and we share everything from contracts, templates, and employee stuff. It's given me such a leg up in this industry starting from the bottom. We continue to share office space and people come and people go. It's a collaborative environment and there's nothing that we won't share with each other. It creates such good energy here but also it helps us all be better, which is a benefit to our industry, the people we employ, the people we work with, and our clients as well.
You are reminding me of Beyoncé. Her famous quote is, “The only competition I have is who I was yesterday.” Jill and Beyoncé, do the same thing.
Beyoncé also only has 24 hours in a day. I'm not sure how that works.
Speaking of you collaborating, you teaching, and working with other people, one of the marketing channels that has helped your business, and it sits very well with your career to date, is traditional print media. I know I'm bringing competition up again. I'm all about community over competition. Getting into the media is competitive and particularly in print media, which a lot of interior designers and landscape architects will say is a key channel for them, even in the day of online publications and everything else.
How have you achieved such great media in a relatively short amount of time? What advice or even products do you have for other people who feel anxious about approaching publications or don’t understand? I remember talking to somebody, and I've come from a career in publications as well, but they said, “Can I email the editor?” I was like, “Of course, you can.” What advice would you have and how did you get so much good media on Jillian Dinkel Designs?
I started in this industry with the knowledge of the other side of the fence, being a magazine editor, and constantly getting pitches. I was probably a bit more well-versed in how that world works and how to approach an editor in the best possible way. Also, it comes back to that idea of who I want to be, a crystallized goal of what I wanted this studio to look like to the outside world. It was one foot in front of the other, one step at a time. How do I prepare for being that studio, that person who is in magazines all the time with my work?
I'm super proud to say every single project that I've done has been published if not in a glossy print magazine, then in a well-respected digital platform, which is becoming so much more important these days. It is something I'm super proud of and has propelled me from nothing to where we are now because I had to be a bit more creative being that I didn't have any connections in the industry. When I decided to leave Vogue and start this business, this new industry, I didn't have my mom's house that I could do a lot for or my parents' friends.
My peers weren't playing at the level that I wanted to be playing at when it comes to home renovations and budgets and that thing. I had to make something of nothing. For me, that was my first project, which was amazing, and such incredible clients to who I am still so grateful today. I did their terrace. At the end of it, we didn't quite have the budget for the beautiful furniture and accessories and things that I wanted.
I loaned it all from showrooms and kitted out the house to look like my final vision, a beautiful, well-furnished, and well-designed house. That ended up getting published in a wonderful magazine that I've been lucky to have such a long relationship with and has published quite a lot of my projects. It takes that 1, 2, and then 3. Now, I have such amazing relationships with these editors, I let them know when something is about to finish, and we start talking about it being published before I'm even done with the project.
It's deciding more like what magazine is this project right for, which is amazing and a place that I feel so grateful to be in. You can put your work forward. It is a circular relationship because the landscape for print publishing is so much more difficult than it was years ago. The budgets are small and the staff is smaller, even smaller than even a few years ago, it's changed so much. They rely on creatives to supply them with beautiful projects, stories, and photography to publishing because they simply can't commission everything for an issue.
They rely on us and we rely on them to give us this platform to show the world our work and with that potential clients. The clients that come to me after seeing my work in a magazine are so much more qualified. They know they want to work with me because they've seen me and my work and they've fallen in love with that. They're often not shopping around, they're past that point.
They're also qualified in that they understand, with our projects, we're going to be doing the interior renovation, the cabinetry, the bath, and all of that plus the furniture, and the styling. They're going to get a beautiful and finished, I don’t want to say, magazine-like interior because that is a fantasy that we create. It's not how people live every day. I work with mostly families with 3 or 4. It doesn't look like that every day but all those bits and pieces are there. If the kids went away for the week, it could look like that. It's that room that you see in a magazine, it's just not day-to-day reality.
I remember many people I’d profiled for the design files and they're like, “I look at the photos of my house on the design files wishing that one day it'll look like that again.” It's true.
For me, the process of getting published is a simple and repeatable formula. Like everything else, it's preparing from the onset of getting a project for that finished space, that finished coverage. Funnily enough, I started my studio over four and a half years ago. That's isn't so long until it was COVID and all of a sudden, I had a baby in there too. It was when we started working together. Delilah wasn't very old. It's been a funny path, this business, and all the things that have happened in my world and the global world during that time.
During COVID, I had a brand new baby as well. I was speaking to a lot of these girls that I share a studio with and I have taught them informally and in no structure at all how to get their work published and they did it. It was incredible and I was proud of them and excited for them. To see their wins stack up on top of each other was and is incredible. I started doing this over Zoom, teaching people one-on-one, my fellow designers, how to get published, the formula, how easy it is, and what you should write to the editor when you're writing them about your project.
Also, how to get noticed and how to make sure the maybe five seconds that you have their attention because they're all busy, how to get in front of them successfully, and also how to take photos of your work that is worthy of a magazine. I've been teaching that under the radar, one-on-one. It's not something I've advertised. It's been more teaching someone and then they tell their other designer friend and they tell their other designer friend. I've been doing it for years. I then was like, “This is crazy, teaching this one-on-one.”
I was doing an hour-long lecture, one-on-one. Under the insistence of my design friends, I have finally filmed it as a course. It’s taken me forever to get here but I'm here now, I've filmed it, and it's now an online course that people can take in their own time, that they can revisit again and again, and remind them how to do this thing. I am super excited about it. The fact that anyone can access it and take it when it suits them because as much as some of the things I reference are Australian, it's the same for New York, the UK, and Brazil. The rules are the same every. It's useful for architects, designers, and any creative who wants their work published in a magazine.
From what I've seen, it looks amazing, it looks very professional, beautiful, and everything you'd expect from Jillian Dinkel Designs.
I'm glad you got a little preview.
I was excited to see it and I was like, “This is going to help many people.” Speaking of help, how have you built this business? You're determined and we've addressed that. You're hard-working and you know what you want. Who has also helped you with business? Has there been a particular book you read? Was there a manager? It sounds like the people you have in your office are helpful, these other people in design. Have you got any films that you've watched? What would you suggest to people or what has helped you the most in building your business? It could also be tech apps or tools or anything else that's helped.
All the things. From day one, it’s connecting with other designers from that early stage. Also, honestly, being lucky enough to fall in with a group of people that were as open to sharing resources, ideas, and stories about what went well and what didn't go well. Learning the lessons through someone else was amazing and it gave me a real headstart. From there, business coaching is amazing. Thank you, Fiona.
Business coaches and podcasts. I am such a lover of podcasts. It's rare for me to be driving anywhere where I'm not listening to a business podcast. There are many great ones out there. An amazing team, that's harder and harder to find these days. I'm thankful to everyone who has worked with me and contracted for me. No one gets anywhere on their own, it's all about the people you surround yourself with in the community. Everyone who's ever worked for me has helped me build this thing.
We were at an award ceremony because we were nominated as Emerging Design Star of the Year, one of the finalists, which is amazing. It's got little to do with me and I owe so much of it to everyone who I've worked with from designers to the trades, builders, photographers, stylists, and everyone who's been a part of getting me to where I am because it is a huge number of people.
As much as you can connect with other people and be curious and thoughtful, try to absorb everything you can. There are some amazing books and tools and apps, I'm all about all of that stuff as well. Firsthand knowledge, there's nothing that compares with experience but also anything that you can absorb from other people is amazing too.
I completely agree, people are such an asset whether you are lucky enough to have an actual staff or suppliers, manufacturers, and what you said about learning from other people's experiences. Often, we are learning from their mistakes because they'll say, “Don't do it this way. Save yourself. This is what not to do.” Getting that from somebody who's been in that position is incredible. What are you most proud of in your business journey so far?
Two things. I am someone who rarely stops to celebrate, which is something that I'm working on. I am working on that. I recognize myself often in other people but sometimes we focus on the goals and then we replace those goals with other goals when we've achieved goals and we don't take a lot of time to stop and celebrate.
Right now, most of our workload is repeat clients, working on their second homes or second stages of their family's day-to-day home. There is no bigger compliment than that. The fact that they've had such a positive experience with us in addition to what is the bare minimum, which is a beautiful, amazing, and gorgeous home, but also the journey is important to me. I want them to enjoy every aspect of it, especially for an experience that is so often regarded as a painful, stressful, and negative time renovating. For clients to come back to us again for the second time around to work with us is a huge compliment and that has been happening so much.
Also, being nominated as an emerging design star, that's huge for me, and that's something that means so much because it's not about a single photo, project, or thing, it's based on a body of work and that's where I want to go and where I wanted to be. Where I want to go from here is to be known for a beautiful body of work. Ideally, for clients who we work with over and over again, that's incredible and amazing and everything I would've wanted out of building this studio up to this date.
What an amazing thing to have people come for a repeat because the work that you're doing with people, similar to architects and everything else, it's a huge amount of money. It’s not just money, it's a huge amount of emotion and time. People are in that space for a lot of their lives so they’re able to go, “You did a beautiful job. We want to come back. We trust you.” It's wonderful to have that repeat business. Congratulations on what you've built.
Thank you. It's wonderful to work with clients a second time around. We work with people for a year, a year and a half, or two years sometimes. Getting to do another thing with them, we're friends, we know each other so well, it's quite an intimate relationship. It was incredible.
Congratulations on the nomination as well. If people are reading this and thinking, “I need to get her media course,” or, “I need to work with her,” or, “She sounds fabulous,” or, “I want a job at Vogue, can she give us some advice?” Where can they connect with you? What's next for Jillian Dinkel Designs?
Thank you. You can connect with me on our website and get in touch there, JillianDinkel.com, or on Instagram, @JillianDinkelDesigns. You can also take my course, that's an incredible thing, and it's going to be available. We'll send you the link so that you can get on the list to be the first to hear about updates on the course being available so you can be the first one in. As well as a little bonus for the readers, which will be exciting.
That is exciting. What's next for you?
We've been excited to launch this course because it takes a village to get something like that off the ground. That's the newest and most exciting thing. We are working on some big projects right now, things that are different and exciting, things that are pinch-me moments, projects that I would've never dreamed that we would get the chance to work on.
This is a slow burn so it's painful. These things have been designed and most of them are in construction now but probably won't be done until the end of 2023, if not, pushing into 2024. It's the long haul but stay tuned for little snippets. We've got an amazing newsletter that we put out and that's where we share more than what you get on Instagram, the real behind-the-scenes. It's an incredible place to watch things unfold.
Can people sign up for that at JillianDinkel.com?
That's right. You can jump onto the newsletter there and get all the amazing exclusives behind-the-scenes goodness.
Thank you so much, Jill, for coming on and sharing. I know that you're a busy woman so I appreciate you taking the time to chat with us. It's lovely to connect with you.
Thank you so much for inviting me. I am so in love with the podcast, it's so good. It was a real honour to be one of your guests.
My pleasure. Bye.
Bye.
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What a wealth of information. I enjoy all my chats with Jillian and I loved that chat just now. I hope that wherever you're reading from and whatever business you have, you have taken away amazing insights and tips from Jillian. The first thing I wanted to mention is Jillian did mention her course so if you are keen to get on that and learn how to get published in the media yourself, check it out at Jillian-Dinkel.MyKajabi.com. You can also use the voucher code, PODCAST20, for 20% off. Jillian, thank you for that. That's for the first twenty people to purchase it. For sure, I would get on that if you are keen to get your work out there.
I would love to know what you took away from this. What are the big things that you're going to change or implement or sit and reflect on based on the chat from Jillian? Two things stood out for me and the first was when Jillian talked about the fact that she's only ever competing with herself. Everyone who reads this or who's worked with me knows I also love Beyoncé. I love that what Jillian was saying is parallel to a Beyoncé quote where she says, “The only person I ever have to compete with is who I was yesterday.”
It's something that we forget as small business owners, particularly when you're starting out, but also as you go along and maybe you are getting a bit stagnant in your business or things are feeling a bit stale and you can look around and see people doing all these fabulous things and particularly, showing you their highlights reel rather than everything that's going on. You can see these things and start down a path of comparison.
I love that Jillian said, “There is more than enough work to go around but also, I'm only competing with who I was. I'm only competing with myself.” It's something that I look at in my own business as well and I've taken it on board. It's an important thing to sit and reflect on, “What was I doing a year ago,” or, “What was I doing two years ago and how have I grown since then?” Going forward, “Where do I want to be in two years?”
Jillian also talked about how she spent a bit of time at the start of her business reflecting on, “Who do I want to be? Who do I want to serve? How am I going to get there?” Also, thinking about that path. It's something you don't want to do just at the start. Jillian is doing this all the way along. It's something that all of us need to do repeatedly to sit down and think about, “Where am I going? Who am I? Who do I need to be? How do I need to show up for these things to happen?”A business is much like a marriage or any relationship that you want to be in long-term, you need to work on it. It's not just set and forget. I love that whole idea that you are only ever competing with yourself.
The second thing that Jillian made abundantly clear is that media is important. I have studied journalism, I was a journalist for a long time, I still write from the media, and I've had a long career in the media. Traditional magazines in particular are something that gets cut out of a lot of people's marketing plans. I'm not sure why. Sometimes people think they have to have a PR agency involved or it's going to cost them heaps of money or maybe they sent one email back in 2007 and no one looked at it so now they never want to do it again.
Media is still a huge part of your marketing and particularly when you're trying to build brand awareness on a mass scale. Often, people can try and try on social media. Yes, social media is fantastic but traditional media is also absolutely brilliant and particularly for those sectors in the service industries where, for instance, people are looking at certain magazines and certain publications for inspiration and to understand, “Who are the people I should be looking at? Who are the architects? Who are the interior designers? Who are the landscape designers? Who are the photographers that I need to be aware of?”
Let's say they're getting married, “Where are the venues that I need to be? Which florist should I be booking for this?” We can read a magazine and that instant credibility and authority that comes with when we read about somebody in a magazine are huge. I love that Jillian also referred to the fact that people who have read about her and have seen her work in publications, one, already have high intentions. They've bought those publications because they are on the journey to changing up their home.
Two, they can be qualified, they're much stronger qualified leads because they have read about her, they have read an interview with her, they have understood how she works, and they have seen her work in a magazine. Therefore they’re a more qualified lead than potentially somebody who sees one post on social media and then contacts her but does not know anything about her, how she works, why she chooses to work with period and heritage homes, or anything else.
I love that she drove that point home because I often talk about this in the Marketing For Your Small Business course that we run, which you can find at Marketing For Your Small Business. It's an important part of your marketing plan and it's one that a lot of people gloss over or forget. That is such a key part of driving your brand awareness and driving your credibility.
If you think about the Buyer Cycle, you've got the awareness, research, evaluation, purchase, and post-purchase both in the awareness part and in the evaluation, which is the most important part sometimes in marketing to get people through that point of which they think, “You are the right fit for me.” That evaluation marketing is all about, “Where's your credibility? Where's your authority? Where's your experience?” All of those things. If you can get that across in an article that is then going out to many people and then that publication is also marketing you on their social media channels, it's huge.
If you are interested, Jillian does have a course all about how to get published in the media and you can find that at Jillian-Dinkel.MyKajabi.com. Thank you again so much for reading. If you want to connect with Jillian, I'm sure she would love to hear from you, you can pop on over to JillianDinkel.com. You can find her on Instagram along with her team, @JillianDinkelDesigns. Thank you again, Jillian, for coming on and sharing so much wisdom. If you like this episode, please share it with a friend. Maybe somebody else needs to get published right now and they need to know all about how to do that with the help of Jillian. Thank you so much for reading. I'll see you next episode.
