Episode 298: Creating spaces that enrich and enhance our lives with Beth Bieske of The Navy Edit and More To Design
In this podcast episode, Fiona talks to Beth Bieske, the founder of two successful businesses - the Navy Edit and More Time to Design. They discuss Beth's journey from a different career trajectory to starting her own business and her willingness to embrace new opportunities and ideas without waiting for everything to be perfect. It's an inspiring conversation for small business owners who may be struggling with procrastination or fear of taking a different path. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
The Navy Edit, her interior design studio, and its name
Starting the business during the pandemic and having two babies
Transitioning from floristry to interior design
Changes made to improve productivity
Systems and Tools that Helped Beth
Importance of persistence in business and how it pays off in the long run
Benefits of doing an end-of-year review
How to contact Beth Bieske
30-day free trial offer
Exciting upcoming projects
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
I find it funny how things come about and I'm sure there's a more succinct way of saying it, but at the time, I started More Time to Design about pretty much close to 12 months. At the time I thought, “This is lonely.” I work from home, and I have my clients, which are great, but I don't have a real support crew of designers around me. One of the things that I think I've struggled with are you come from a firm and there'll be an architect, you know that's sitting across the hallway from you. There'll be someone who does a lot of your furniture specification so they'll know here's the new rep at such and such a company thing. But when you work for yourself, you don't have that. And sometimes it becomes very isolating because you're like, “I just wish I knew who to pick up the phone to talk to the thing. Or to just bounce ideas around.”
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Welcome to episode 298 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. Today you're reading an interview with an amazing small business owner and if you have ever wondered about taking on something slightly different from what you're already working on or maybe changing the game for people in your industry, then you want to listen to today's episode as that is exactly what my guest has been doing. Before we get stuck into that, I wanted to mention that this episode is the last for the My Daily Business Coach podcast. With that name we are changing, don't worry, don't stress. As of next week, we will have all the same great content, it'll have a slightly different name and different artwork, just keep an eye out for that. It is not hugely different, but it is something to keep an eye out for if you're looking for the yellow square.
The other thing of course I want to mention is to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of this land on which I record this podcast and that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been seated. Let's get into today's small business interview.
Today it is my absolute pleasure to be bringing you an interview with the amazing Beth Bieske, who is the founder of not only one interior design business, the Navy Edit, but a second business that helps interior designers called More Time to Design. Beth is a member of our Group Coaching program and has gone through my Marketing for Your Small Business program. I've just been in awe of how she has created a software business, which is not something that you often see with interior designers creating software companies. But she has done that because she's found a massive gap in the market for a program, a software platform that would enable her to create the business that she wants without having to outsource every single thing or without having to have 16 different platforms that have to then talk to each other.
As somebody myself who runs our business on many platforms that do have to talk to each other and we use a lot of Zapier and all sorts of other workarounds, sometimes I find it just fascinating and inspiring that Beth was able to not just that frustration that a lot of small business owners have, but then take that and create her platform More Time to Design. In today's chat, we talk about how did she do that. We also talk about the Navy Edit, her interior design business, and the careers that she's had before starting her interior design business or even being an interior designer, which is something that Beth has done for 12 years. What I love about Beth in both this chat and also in all of the chats that I've been able to have with her across the last few months or the last year or so, is just her eagerness to share her knowledge, but also her eagerness to just keep going and finding different ways to make things happen.
In our interview today, she talks about when she was creating all of this and had a lot of personal things happening. Now I'm not somebody for hustling and I don't think that Beth falls into the hustle, hustle, hustle mentality, but I think what instead she falls into is not looking for this perfect opportunity and for everything to have aligned perfectly before you start that she just goes for it. I think as a small business owner myself, and as somebody who works with small business owners, we can sometimes get frozen in procrastination or frozen in thinking about an idea for ages without taking any practical steps to make it happen. And in our chat you'll see that Beth is quite the opposite and is very much like, I've got this idea, let's just see what can happen, and let's just see if I put it out to the universe or get in touch with somebody or have a go.
I think it's a real attitude of, let's have a go. As you hear Beth started in a different career, she went down a different trajectory with university and even that was a surprise to me. I hadn't heard that story before, but it all makes sense and it's a reminder that so many of us come to the business with different experiences, and different education. Maybe we were going to go down one path and we veered left. I think it's a really lovely reminder with Beth that amazing things can happen when you do take a veer off from the track that you thought you were going down and to not be frightened of it but rather embrace it. Here it is, my chat with the wonderful Beth Bieske of the Navy Edit and More Time to Design.
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Hello Beth, welcome to the podcast.
Hi Fiona, thank you so much for having me.
You are so welcome. It's my absolute pleasure to have you on as I get to see a bit more about your business and learn from you. Talking about business, that's what we're on here to chat about today. But before we do, where are you joining us from and how are you feeling about life right now?
I'm coming to you from my home office here on the leafy north shore in Sydney. I am very fortunate, I have a beautiful Highline window that looks straight out into the tree. I have that as my view. I’m feeling great about life at the moment and business. I feel like this year is speeding past so quickly already. But there are lots of exciting things on the horizon, feeling good, but if it could slow down just a little bit, that would be great.
I feel like that too. I said to my husband the other day, “Oh my god, we're into March” and then I said, “And it's going to be Christmas before we know it.”
I'm feeling like that. Can we all just slow down a little bit? But I have to say I do feel like 2023, I don't want to jinx it, but it's feeling like a better year than the last few years have felt exhausting and I don't feel as exhausted maybe yet, but yet, I second where you're coming from.
I feel that as well. I feel like 2022 just felt frenetic. Everyone was out of lockdown, like had this list of things that they had to get through and I think we all burnt ourselves out thing by the end of 2022. 2023 does feel a little calmer.
Yes. Let's check back in at the end of the year and see what we say. Tell us about one of your businesses, the Navy Edit, what is that? When did you start it? Why did you start it and what's with the name?
The Navy Edit is the interior design studio that I have been running for four and a half years and it's been an interesting ride. I started the business when my son was six months old, which came about for a couple of different reasons. And just as the business was gaining momentum, covid hit, and then in the middle of Covid we had another baby. I was saying to someone the other day, I feel like my business has been on a spin cycle for like the last few years and I'm just getting out of that now a thing. A pretty interesting start to a business but was fortunate that I have had some amazing clients and all of that stuff. Even though if there's ever an ideal time to start a business thing.
That's the Navy Edit and most of my work is over all around Sydney. I do a lot of work up here on the North Shore, wherever the good projects are, I'll go. When I came up with the name I never thought I would get so many questions about it, but I do. I always knew that I didn't want my name on the door so I didn't want it to be Beth Bieske designs. And when I started the business I didn't know exactly what it was going to look like. I didn't know if it would just be interiors or if there'd be a product or a homewares part to it. And I also have a background in floristry, I didn't know if that was going to come into it as well. I wanted to keep this nondescript name. And then I love navy, I wear navy, I put it in my interiors, it's everywhere thing. That's the navy part. And then the edit is, editing is the main part of what an interior designer does kind of thing. We spent our days editing concepts and finishes and all that stuff. That's how we ended up with the Navy Edit.
There's so much in that. I love the idea of the spin cycle. I have been there many times, but you're like, are we going to be done soon? We're going to be finished and good on you. Having so many babies in a crazy short time, but also a very hectic world time. It's a lot to start a business and have a baby and then have another baby and in a pandemic and be doing something like in your industry where you need to be out of lockdown to be able to meet with people and do all of that. You hinted or you glossed over there that you had a floristry background. Did you always know that you wanted to design? Have you always been very creative? Were you working as a florist before going into interior design?
Yes. When I left school I thought I was going to be a doctor. Nothing creative at school, all of that stuff. And got to the end of the degree and I was like, “I'm not sure if this is for me.” I need to do something 180 degrees away from a science degree. I enrolled in this part-time floristry cross, it was the first time I'd ever done anything creative. I think everyone who knew me was like, “What? You've never shown any interest in this whatsoever.” I loved it. I was good at it and it just all made sense. From that, that led to having a floristry business for eight years, which was amazing. It's a hard business to have like floristry is, I think a lot of jobs are like this, but I think floristry is something where the perception of it is so different from the reality. That business just ran its course and I knew I wanted to do something creative but different so I ended up in interior design.
Wow. I can imagine you as a doctor because you're very good. My sister's a doctor and I think one of the big things that people may not know is that, and I don’t know if they do it now, but back in the day when she got into med school the interview process was important because it was like how do you communicate and what do you like with people? Because that's a huge part of the skill, especially if you want to be a GP or something that's talking to people all day long. And I could imagine you being that you're a very good communicator. I was like, I could see you becoming a doctor.
So funny. Some people have said that to me recently because the story has come up and I'm like, “Oh well.”
What a change from that to floristry. And then from floristry to interior design, was it that you were working with interior designers?
The desire to have my own business was still there. I'm in the very fortunate position that I have friends who have got kids that are a little bit older than mine. I can learn from their challenges. At the time, after I finished my studies, I got a job with Blainey North, one of Australia's best interior designers, and worked with her and then also Greg Natale after her for about six years. I think I was across both of them and had exposure to amazing projects, the size, and scale of projects are just phenomenal but the time and the work just aren't that conducive to family life. I always had it in the back of my mind that when we started a family, I might need to look at a different option for work.
And it just all came about that when I was on mat leave with my son, it felt like it was the right time to start my own business. I think I've always had that desire to work for myself and for personal reasons, but I think they're universal personal reasons. I want to be able to have the flexibility for my family. I had seen that my husband is so supportive, but he works in a more traditional corporate nine-to-five job thing. I had seen the challenges that bring. I was like, “Okay, how can I design a life that means that we don't end up with two stressful burnout parents at the end of the week?” I still don't think we get there. I still sometimes think we have two burnout stress parents at the end of the week.
Who doesn't?
Exactly. But I think that desire to work for myself has always been pretty strong.
I'm fascinated for those that you know may not know I work with Beth, I feel like I did know a bit about you but now I'm like, I should have everyone that I ever work with on the podcast because you just learned so much about people. Coming onto the podcast, part of the reason obviously is to bring you on but also to talk about your software company, which is another thing, and now I'm seeing it because you're like, “I studied this and then I did this” and you're very determined, you have a lot of ambition in you. Can you talk us through the other business that you're running at the moment and how that came up?
It's not necessarily interior design and software development. I wouldn't say too common career things that go together, but it pretty much came about because I was getting to the point in my interior design studio where I was like, I either need to take on staff or grow out my team. Or do I need to turn down projects or I suppose to limit my income in a way? I didn't think either of those was a great option at my time, when I was working for the other designers, I managed large teams and that was just so stressful to me. I understand for some businesses it's needed to have a larger headcount, but I was just like, it's just not for me. And I looked around and I was like, there are things I could be doing better in my interior design business. I could be saving time. I looked at things like Asana and Trello and all of these things, but there was nothing where I could capture my whole design studio on one platform. I was like, I want like an ecosystem online that is my design studio. There were a couple of other programs that were on the market, but they didn't fit the bill. They were pitched at too large of a firm. They were cost-prohibitive, and they were based in the states. There were just a few things that nothing hit the bill. I just thought, “I'll build it to solve my problem.”
I love that you do this and now I know that you come from a science background. I'm like, “Okay, you can build it.”
The other part of it as well, that was important to me, which I find it funny how things come about and I'm sure there's, there's a more succinct way of saying it, but like at the time, I started More Time to Design about pretty much close to 12 months. At the time I thought, “This is lonely.” I work from home, and I have my clients, which are great, but I don't have a real support crew of designers around me. One of the things that I think I've struggled with are you come from a firm and there'll be an architect, you know that's sitting across the hallway from you. There'll be someone who does a lot of your furniture specification so they'll know here's the new rep at such and such a company thing. But when you work for yourself, you don't have that. And sometimes it becomes very isolating because you're like, “I just wish I knew who to pick up the phone to talk to the thing. Or to just bounce ideas around.”
I wanted this solution for my business but I also wanted a community of designers around me thing. I started More Time to Design with those two big things in mind. Making sure you can get the most out of your day. And one of the things that, I suppose this, the second point to that is interior design is like, a large proportionate of females and a large proportion of them that come to work on their own in their studios have started their business because they've had a baby or they need to care for parents and they need flexibility. I feel very strongly about equipping women to grow very successful businesses so that they have financial stability for whatever that means for them. I felt like that's a big pillar thing. Community and collaboration go very much hand in hand with running your business as well. Run them well and they don't need to be small businesses. They can have all the professionalism of a large studio thing with this platform.
I'm just sitting over here going “Yes, yes, yes.” I mean, so much to your point about financial stability, that is keen and I talk about that quite a bit and we've talked about before homelessness in Australia is going up in the 55 plus bracket for women. That's the largest growing bracket. I think it's amazing that that's part of why you built this. But I'm also still like how do you go from, Asana and Trello don't work for me, I'm going to build a platform. How does that happen? In addition to having two very young children, you running a business an interior design business there has a lot of clients and a lot of suppliers and a lot of parts to it. How do you build more time to design, which is the name of your company?
That all came about through the joy of social media, which I love and hate with equal amounts. Someone who, an acquaintance that I knew about 10 years ago from my days down in the florist shop, I had seen through their social media that like when I knew them he was a nurse and I can't remember what she did, but they had nothing to do with software and they have gone through this whole transition and now they have a software development company. It's funny like I think sometimes people when you get a like a look into people's business, they must be like, there must be grand plans and marketing plans and business plans. And I'm like, “No, there was none of that.” I had the thought and I messaged, I was like, “Okay, can it be that hard to build?”
Let's just see I messaged these guys and I was like, “So bit random, haven't spoken to you in 10 years. I don't even know if this is what you do, but this is what I'm thinking. Can we have a chat?” And they were like, “Yep, this is exactly what we do. We'd love to chat.” Went backward and forward a few times with them on some initial ideas and how do you build a software platform. How does it work? We took maybe three or four months to build this first iteration of the software platform. It all happened at a crazy time of my life, like an even crazy time of my life. I don't say this to go in a boastful way.
I kind of say it to go, you just sometimes have to do it this way. At the time I was caring, I was the primary carer, an elderly relative, and over the six months, pretty much from when I started to build the software to when we launched she passed away. I spent a lot of time on calls with the development company either in hospital car parks or in random hospital waiting rooms or just in random spots thing. And I was like, if I wait for a perfect time for this, it's never going to happen. I remember the kickoff meeting, which was this big briefing meeting and all this stuff and I had grand plans. I was going to walk, like do a walk while I was doing it because I think better and talk better that way.
Of course, it was raining, I didn't have an umbrella. I spent this whole meeting in the post office border because it was the only place I could stand that it was dry. And I was just like, “This is true chaos but this is how it's going to get done. This is how I'm going to get this done.” And yeah and that's how we go. I've got this development team that I talk to and they build it all out for me. But I've given very specific instructions as to how I wanted to look and feel and work and all of that stuff.
Wow. Firstly I'm sorry for your loss of a relative. But also, I'm just astounded at you just being like, I'll just get it done and this is how it happens and it's not going to be this perfect where I can be in a boardroom and I can have the time to sit and listen and do all of that. I think it's just so good. And then from a practical standpoint, obviously you help people through this platform be more productive but you've got the platform, you've got the membership part of the platform and then you've got your own interior design business. How do you practically work on two different businesses at the same time?
This was something I had to work on. I took a lot of December and January off and I completely redid everything because it wasn't working very well last year. It was just like scatter gun and it was like whoever was at the top of my email list was getting my attention so that no one was getting very good Beth at all. A couple of things have helped me there are three main things. I've always vaguely time-blocked my calendar, but this year I have taken it to a whole new level. I have very specific times when I'm working on not just like this is Navy Edit time and this is More Time to Design time. I break it down into, this product development time for More Time to Design.
It's very specific blocks of time and that was a way for me to go, “Okay, well I know that everything that I need to get done is going to be covered in that week.” That time blocking in my calendar helps me because I have to also factor in school pickups and swimming lessons and soccer and all that stuff. It all had to fit and I knew that if I didn't have it blocked out it wouldn't happen. The other thing that I've done, which sounds simple but I've made such a big difference is I've got quite a detailed to-do list. It's just in the Google Sheets thing. But I spent a day setting it up with like dropdown menus and all this stuff. That paired with the calendar blocking means that I don't have to sit and go like especially if I think something about product development, I only have one block of product development a week.
To come back to it seven days later and go where was I? Like what it is, like it'll take me half the time to figure that out. By having it all so detailed in my to-do list, I can just quickly go and pick up that and put it in thing. The two work well together. And then the other thing I have set up, I've used Calendly before but never very well, and this year I've flipped it a little bit and it took me a while to feel comfortable doing this going, here's my calendar link you book in a time when it works for me. Set aside times, like I've got certain blocks when I can have client meetings because they make sense for my schedule when I can do client meetings. I think not letting other people dictate my week has been something that's changed my productivity because I'm running to my schedule, not someone else's.
I feel like preaching to the choir. I would love to just press on that point a little bit because I work with a lot of interior designers and as you know as well I'm a massive fan of the time blocking and Calendly and all of that. The pushback that I often hear is, that works for you because you're a coach and people can book in with you and they're happy to fit into your time. But I'm working with real families who don't always. Firstly, have you had major pushback from people?
No. I have to admit I very much thought the same. I was like, I can't impose that on someone or anything like that. And it's interesting, I think there's a big discussion and it could be going on in other industries as well, but there's a lot of discussions now in terms of pricing and charging in interior design around value pricing and charging for your value. One of the things that I needed to, I suppose work on myself for my business is appreciating. I offer value and service and just like when you bring up book booking for a doctor's appointment, you have to work in with their schedule, the same with the lawyer or the OT or whoever it might be. I'm a professional offering a service and therefore if that doesn't work for a client, then they're not the right client for me.
And that's been a bit of a mindset shift that I've had to work on. And I think that sometimes you do fall into that trap of like it won't work, but it's like it does. I haven't had any pushback. You have to as well set up your schedule as. You can't just have one time in the week. I make sure I've got a couple of times some's morning, some's afternoon, some's in the middle of the day. You've got to be a bit emotionally intelligent about how you set that up. But overall I haven't had any pushback and it's working well.
I love that you said that because I thought the same. As I thought, if I don't let people have booked on a Friday, they're going to be like, “Well that's my day I have to work the rest of the time. That's my day to work on the business.” I have had one person in eight years that was like, you don't have any availability on a Friday. I'm like, “Yeah, I don't work Friday.” We forget that I think so much, especially in service businesses, I feel like we think, I need to cater to everything that the client could want. And you have already talked through lots of different ways that people could get time back or be more strategic about their time. Are there any other things that you see once people start using more time to design that they comment on?
Like is there a common theme where they're like, this part has helped? Or is it the being able to just have it all in one program? Is there anything else that you think interior designers, especially if they're reading to this, could benefit from in the, I mean obviously there's lots to benefit from in the platform, but is there anything that people say to you quite often like, “I started doing that.” I know people that are doing time blocking and they say the same thing like, “Oh my god, I started doing it, and it's changed my life.”
One of the things that I said to the developers, was I want the overarching. When we talk about decisions that we've got to make and all that thing, I want us to keep coming back to the fact that I want to enter a piece of information once. Then you can take that piece of information through the whole process in different ways, but you don't need to keep reentering it. That's been something that I've been conscious of doing and making sure we stick to that Highline concept. And that's come out in the feedback from designers and that they've found that great, and the fact that they can enter a piece of information about a chair or whatever it is and they can take that through to client approval easily. That's the biggest thing. And having all that information in one spot like that seems like such a basic thing, but there isn't a platform where you can do that easily with all the other bits that you need for an interior design firm.
You might have your client directory sitting in Excel, but I know your time tracking on a different app and you might have Asana and all that stuff. I think just having an all-together has been, everyone's finding it very helpful. And the other thing as well is around how you can keep track of different parts of your project client. People are loving that thing. And then also the client's approval. We have an ability where you can easily send a web link to the client and they can approve your pieces. And it sounds like interior designers, we're a little bit slow sometimes picking up technology. The amount of designers that I'd see is like hand-scribbled notes from the client on a scanned PDF thing. To be able to automate that has been great.
I've seen other people using WhatsApp messages, and that can get overwhelming if you've been sent 12 different shares to review or 12 different things. Likewise, on the other side of your business. As an interior designer with the Navy Edit, do you have any tips for people trying to create a very calm environment, whether that's in their store? I've been talking to quite a few retailers recently about it because mental health is more talked about, which is a great thing, but they're like, sometimes the people in the store can get very stressed or not even stressed but just need a moment of calm and there's nowhere in the store to do that. We've talked about things like just putting a chair somewhere with a little bit of space around it or a curtain around it so that people can have that minute to themselves. Do you have any tips for creating a calming space, whether it's in your home office if you're like a service-based provider or an office, or in a physical location, like a shop or a beauty salon or something?
Two things I think personally like clutter. I suppose in a store it can be a hard thing. You can have a store that has an abundance of products but it still feels calm. I think having an order to how you set things out is important. And as well in an office. Just having the clutter away. I think a clean space just means a clean mind to me. The other thing that I think is important that I think is overlooked so often is lighting. You walk into a store and it's beautiful but it's got this awful lights kind of thing. And it can be as simple as changing out a light bulb from a cold light to a warm light or having different shades of lighting. You might have some floor lamps and some table lamps, not just overhead lighting. I think lighting is quite often overlooked in retail spaces and it's an easy one-to-do thing that you can create those different areas of like lighting, like zones through lighting.
That is so interesting because a few years ago, we changed the fans in our room cause they were old and we changed them in all of the bedrooms at our house. And these newer, I mean we've had them for like a year and a half, but they have three different lights so you can flick it and it's bright and then one in between. And I'm like, “It's nice too if I'm trying to get dressed in the morning, I put it on the brightest and it does make a difference just bringing things down a little bit.
Exactly. And it's like even time of day or all of that stuff or if you have an abundance of natural light and all of that stuff. But lighting is such a big part of successful interiors because it does affect your mood.
It does. Can I ask you a question? I'm going to put you on the spot. I think a lot of people, what do your friends think? Are they always like tidying their house before you come around? Because they're like, “She's an interior designer, she's going to judge everything in my house or clutter.” I mean, looking at the back of your house, it looks very beautiful.
This is a very typical zoom, this is the tiniest spot in our house. This looks great, but everything else, I mean most of my friends are like, they've usually all hit me up for some question at some point along the line. They usually are a bit of a disclaimer about, “Oh it's such a mess.” And I'm like, “I do not care.” My house does not look like a magazine shoot. Most houses that you have seen in a magazine shoot do not look like that the day before or the day after the magazine shoot. It was like when I was a florist everyone was like, “Your house must be full of beautiful flowers.” And I'm like, “No way.”
No, I want to switch it off when I get home. Part of the More Time to Design is to help other people with their businesses. How or who has helped you with yours? Have you read any good books? It could be this business or the florist or any of the multiple businesses that you have run. Is there anything that stood out to you? And similarly, even if it's a tech tool outside of More Time to Design.
There's no one book in particular but I'm a big podcast listener, of My Daily Business Coach. I listen to lots of random podcasts that aren't small business related. But I find that there are lots of little bits of information that you take in. I've also been fortunate that I've got in my close circle of friends. People who, they're not in small business they're in big corporate, but they've just got this wealth information and they help me see the business through a different lens. And there's a lot that small businesses can learn from corporate and vice versa. It's quite nice. It's been helpful having those people around to offer that and being a bit of a sounding board. But they've been really good. And then I have a couple of quotes that I have on my desk.
I love quotes.
Calvin Coolidge who is an American president in the twenties said that “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” And then the other one is from James Clear of Atomic Habits Spain. And it's about, “It's remarkable that business you can build if you just keep going small habits don't add up, they compound.” And I think both of them are potent to me at the moment as I think it's feeling like everything in business is taking so much longer than it should thing. But I think sometimes just the practice of moving forward, even if it's one tiny step at a time, you're still moving forward. They're my big things at the moment.
I love that. Particularly the second one about the compound. I think that's so true. Even though this is my eighth year in business and I feel like the Sunday email that I've been sending, I feel like for years I never, not years but like for a while there was a reply. There was just like, I'm sending this out, I mean besides my friends being like, “Oh fun, you don't even have a business. But thanks for being on the email list” and now we get so many replies and lots of people that will come up and even the other day I'm like, "I'm on your email list” and it's so nice. It's that just keep doing it, just putting it out, don't give up. Get instant Feedback.
And it's funny you mentioned the email list because at the end of last year, my Instagram was hacked and I lost all of that. I always knew you had to have an email like, I'm on board that social media is a tool and it's part of a marketing strategy, but you don't own that property so you need to own your list. And it's been a real challenge because you have like one subscriber. You're like, it's one more than there was last week thing. Like one plus one, you slowly get there. Someone said to me at the end of last year, they were encouraging me to do like an end-of-year review.
I was like, I don't have time, I don't need to sit down. And they were like, “No because if you don't do the end-of-year review, you won't see that compound of all the work you've done.” And it's that reflecting on that compounding of results is what gives you the drive to keep going for the next year thing or helps you when you do feel like it's getting very slow and you are like, "Am I going to get anywhere." It can be hard at the time to remember that you will get there but you just got to keep going.
You have got to keep going. On that note, what are you most proud of from your journey of keeping going in business?
Well as I draw close to the fifth anniversary of the Navy Edit, I'm proud of the business that I'm building. As I said, I recently sat down and re-looked at some goals and I was like, “Wow, I've come quite far, which has been nice to reflect on.” And the other thing which might sound a bit weird is that I've realized I wasn't doing a lot of things very well and in that, I've gone, I'm not doing them well. I have an option here to either keep not doing them well and not being happy or I'm going to put on my big girl boots and change things and make it a better business. I'm proud that I've taken that step and not just put my head in the sand and have More Time to Design. I'm just proud that I've got a software company out there helping.
I know you're like Silicon Valley, watch out.
I am proud of the fact that I can reflect on the business and go it's good but it's not great. ,
I think it's great from the outside, but yes, I know what you mean when you're like, this and this and this could get changed. And I love also that you said, I've got two options I can just keep going and just be okay with things or change it. Thank you so much for coming on here and chatting about all things. I wish we could just keep this for another hour because I could keep asking your bunch of questions, but if people are reading this and I'm keen to understand how they can adopt more time to design and start using that platform or maybe they are renovating their house or maybe both, how do they get in touch with you? Where are the best places to connect?
On Instagram it's @the_navy_edit and More Time to Design is at @more_time_to_design. And then the Navy Edit website is just thenavyedit.com and moretimetodesign.com and for the designers out there, more time to design, jump on the email list, and also we offer a 30-day free trial for more time to design so you can get in there and have a look. We're in the process of issuing, like releasing the second iteration of the software. Lots and lots and lots of new stuff coming thing. It's a great time to jump on and have a look and give it a go.
Amazing. Anything else that you wanted to mention that's coming up just in either business that you are excited by or anything fun that you're doing at the moment?
Yes with the Navy Edit, we've got a couple of projects that we've been working with clients for like two years thing, which are coming to the end and we're going to be photographing them and getting them out there. That's exciting. When you work with a client in their home for so long, you become really good friends. It's lovely to get to that endpoint and celebrate that work. And with More Time to Design, as I mentioned, one of the things I was confident about was that I wanted to build the platform that I knew I needed, but also I wanted it to work for most people out there as well. We've taken a lot of feedback on and as I said, developing this second iteration of the software, which is going to be so exciting.
There's a part in there that speaks to the collaboration side of it as well, which I am so excited about. And we're also in the process of launching our podcast with the community side of it as well. That's coming up in the next few months, which will be very exciting as well because I'd love chatting to designers and learning more about design and all that stuff, lots and lots in the pipeline and it's an exciting few months, and rest of the year to come.
We'll link to all of that. Especially when the podcast is up. I love podcasts. I think they're a great medium, especially for your audience as well. Congratulations and everything you've done and thank you so much for joining me and we'll link to all of those places in the show notes, but thanks so much, Beth.
Thank you, Fiona. Bye.
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How lovely is Beth? Honestly, I could have just kept talking to her for ages and I mean it when I think I would love to bring on every single client that I've ever worked with because you learn so much about them in this podcast interview who knew that she was going to become a doctor. But it all makes so much sense because as I said to Beth on the podcast, she is such a good communicator, she's very warm and friendly and I've seen her in group situations as well where she's just so encouraging of other people and I could imagine her being any career or having any job where she's working with people and that's exactly what she's doing with both of her businesses, the Navy Edit and More Time to Design at the moment. It all just makes a lot of sense.
I would love to know what you took away from that and I'm going to highlight two things in a minute before I do. If you are reading this and thinking I need to connect with Beth as she said, you can do that over at moretimetodesign.com and thenavyedit.com and we'll link to both of those in the show notes along with her Instagram handles. Two things stood out for, me, one is just Beth's determination to be fulfilled in what she's doing. I think that sometimes we can get stuck in feeling frustrated by something and not doing anything about it. I love that Beth is one of those people that say, for example, she couldn't find a solution to what she needed. She was looking through all these different software programs like Trello, Asana, Notion, and all of them.
And they couldn't allow her to input everything that she needed and export what she needed in one place. She created it, I love that. But also I love that she talked about being a florist and doing that for eight years and realizing, this is not my passion anymore or maybe it's her passion, but I don't want to do it as a career anymore and change. And I was at a conference recently and they talked about it, I was like, “Where did I hear this?” It was at a high school that we were looking at, we did a high school tour for my son and the principal spoke about the fact that his age group will go on to have about, I think she said 17 or 19 different careers in their lifetime, which to somebody of my age group seems to like, that's so many.
Because we were raised by a lot of people I know and myself included with parents who had similar careers their whole life. I know my father-in-law worked at a particular place for I think 40 something years the same place. That is not uncommon. For my generation, I remember thinking, are people going to look at my LinkedIn and think, you've moved around a bit? Because I'd stay at places for two or three years and now two years I think is very common for people to spend two years in a job, particularly younger people, and then move on. And I love that in Beth's career to date that she's had different careers and that she has moved into something she's very, very passionate about. She's been doing interior design for 12 plus years and then more time to design more recently.
But I love that she talked about these other things that she had because I've talked to people all day long who would love to start a business and one of the biggest obstacles is sometimes that they say, “I've done this career for this amount of time so I am it too late to start at something new?” Or what will people think? Or all of that. And I love that Beth has changed and just been, had this belief in herself that I know what I want and I'm going to go out there and get it. I love it so much. That was the first thing that stood out.
The second, which goes in line with this, is that when we talked about how she created More Time to Design that she saw people looked at her networks and thought, you know what, yes, I haven't spoken to these people in 10 years, but I'm just going to put the word out and see is this something that you do because it's that first step that we sometimes can procrastinate on or get frozen by. And yet it's that first step that often gets us to where we need to go. I know with my book, first book, Passion Purpose Profit, I felt the same. I'd been talking about writing a book for ages and then my husband was like, “Why don't you just try and make it happen?” And it sounded so simple, but his saying led me to then think about, “Okay, who could I contact?” I had studied book publishing and I went back to the guy who had been the advisor or that created that whole course at RMIT and contacted him and then that led to him contacting different people and it ended up with me having a meeting at Hardie Grant and getting my first book offer. I just think though we can sometimes overthink it rather than go, "You know what, I'm just going to reach out."
As Beth did, she reached out, she didn't have some grand plan that, I'm going to reach out and it going to immediately happen. It was more of a, how can I start this from where I'm at? I think we don't do that enough. And yes, of course, there are networks and connections that maybe you want to write a book and you've never worked in the book industry ever. Of course, it's going to be a little bit harder. But often we know somebody who knows somebody or we can look somebody up on LinkedIn and see if they've got any other mutual contacts or if there are lots of things we can do. I think so many times we overthink it similarly when I talked about Beth who has helped you and she talked about her friends that have corporate careers and how they have been really helpful.
And again, I think sometimes we worry that we can only talk to other small business owners about small business rather than love. It just seems a part and parcel of Beth's nature is that she's very open to all sorts of inputs and ideas and that she was open to her friends and thinking even though you're not a small business owner, I know that you've got this incredible experience and incredible knowledge and wisdom that I can draw on. And similarly give back as well. There were so many other things that I'd love to highlight, but those two stood out to me. I'd love to know what you took away from this and I'm sure Beth would as well. Again, don't be a stranger. You can find us on Instagram. I'm just @MyDailyBusinessCoach and Beth is over at, well either More Time to Design or the Navy Edit, @the_navy_edit, and similarly the same format with @more_time_to_design, but we will link to those on the show notes as well.
The show notes for this, you'll be able to find over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/298. Thank you so much for reading and just a reminder that from the very next episode, you may see a different artwork for this podcast and also a different name, slightly different name. It's not that different, but just keep an eye out for that. And of course, we'll be talking about that in the upcoming episodes as well as why we rebranded and what we have done to do that, and what the whole process has been like because it has taken a lot longer than I originally thought. Thanks so much for reading.
