9: "Designing" Your 6-Figure Business with Betsy Helmuth

Our guest today is Betsy Helmuth, owner and operator of Affordable Interior Design. She has designed over 1500 spaces including apartments in Argentina, a McDonalds in Brooklyn, and a mansion in India.

• Betsy started out by working for free for Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’s Thom Filicia, while making a living as a bartender. This led to her becoming interested in having her own firm.
• She reached out to Thom because it was something she wanted to do, but he came back to her and said he needed her help.
• Sometimes when you see people on big platforms you think they’ve made it in different ways.  If anything, they are probably looking to grow and it’s a really good time to reach out.  
• Once she got clarity, Betsy’s business grew from an idea to the six-figure mark in a couple of years.
• Betsy didn’t know anything about SEO when she started blogging but she just kept writing all the time.
• She would sit down at the beginning of the month and line them all up. She would come up with ideas for different days of the week. She would put a picture up and a couple sentences of what she thought about it.

If you’re going to do something, if you are going to maintain that consistency, then you have to get really passionate about it.  

Nurture your tribe. Put a lot of information out there but when you nurture your prospects and the people they become your tribe.

When you hire someone they are living your brand and you have such a specific trade, how did you manage the process?

I evaluated the way I work.  I have a very specific method for how I work.  It’s the same for every client that I have ever seen.  I do and say the same thing to each client.  So, I teach that to my designers.  Even though all my interior designers have all been to interior design school, unlike me.  Even though they have all worked as paid designers in the field, unlike me.  I also make them train for a month in my method.  So when you get an Affordable Interior Design designer, they are going to do all the steps that I do so that I know that every client is getting the exact same experience.  So, I had to distill this unpredictable design method into a very formulaic.  Which is how I like to work.  Freedom with in a form.  So I have a formula that I do every time and it works every time.

You can find Betsy Helmuth at:

Website: www.affordableinteriordesign.com

Podcast: www.bigdesignsmallbudget.com  

Facebook: Affordable Interior Design.