Latest / Really Renée / Ep. 12 - The Performatively Perfect Industry (And Why I'm Over It)

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Ep. 12 - The Performatively Perfect Industry (And Why I'm Over It) · Really Renée

• RR EP 12 The perfect industry: I just am over, over, over, over the perfection in this industry. I'm over the pressure that the industry has. I'm over the expectations. And I think that it's important to honor that and say it. And then also just be willing to say, look, my business does seven figures in revenue every year. And it doesn't require me to be perfect. It doesn't require all of the things that you would assume are required. to get there. We're dreamers. Don't care what other people say we're dreamers. Welcome back. This is Really Renee, the podcast with me, Samantha Struck of Studio Renee. Today we're gonna be talking about the performative, perfect industry expectations that are the reason why I wanted to do this and why I wanted to bring education, awareness, and conversations to the table. So buckle up. I think this is gonna be one of those like honest, hard conversations that we have, but I think it's gonna be good and I think it's necessary. so let's just talk about the reality of interiors in general. And one of the things that I have always kind of really struggled with in general is the expectation of perfection, right? And that's been one of those things that's been like a through line and thread. If you look back in our Instagram and our history of social media, I have been a designer that showcased the process of interiors, as in like the messy construction sites or you know, the back end of the business, the less glamorous things, warehousing, boxes, all the things that are not quote. Pretty enough to make it onto a social media feed. So that's been one of those things that I literally for years have made a pillar for myself because one of my core values is just authenticity. And I think that this industry is mostly inauthentic, to be honest. So yeah, I just am over, over, over, over the perfection in this industry. I'm over the pressure that the industry has. I'm over the expectations. And I think that it's important to honor that and say it. And then also just be willing to say, look, my business does seven figures in revenue every year. And it doesn't require me to be perfect. It doesn't require all of the things that you would assume are required to get there. So I think that this is gonna be just such an interesting conversation. I'm so excited to see like what you guys have to say because some of my hot takes are gonna be controversial. Some of the things that I'm gonna say might be a little, I don't know, sassy. But I just think it's important and I would be not true to myself and not true to the purpose of this podcast and the goals if we didn't just talk about it. so let's talk about Instagram specifically, or just social media specifically. I think one of the things that I struggle with the most, honestly, is just the perfection of it all. The expectation that every single frickin' shot of your portfolio must be perfect, photo ready, crop to perfection, staged to perfection, all of those things. And I I agree that. That those things are important. I agree that the final shots are important for various reasons. obviously they make us look good. They are the thing that are like more marketable to PR companies and for getting pitches and exposure. But if your business is like perfect on the outside and then fire on the inside, number one, that's gotta be really stressful for you. I know it was for me. And it just feels fake. We live in an era where fakeness is normal. It's what we all deal with every day on social media. And so I guess my question is like, at what point have we reduced the very industry to fake perfect images and we've lost the humanity behind what it is that we actually do. So when we talk about like in other episodes, when we talk about AI, when we talk about things that like are gonna replace us over time, it is our humanness that makes us essential. And so if all we're doing is like posting perfect pictures all the time and not really talking about the process or the behind the scenes or all the important things that we do as designers, then it's gonna be really easy for a client or potential customer To consider alternatives like Nano Banana Pro to just plug some shit in and get a rendering back because you're losing sight on all of the things that we actually do beyond just design, if that makes sense. So that's one of the reasons why I'm over it. The other one is like literally, I think that the industry is just like wickedly frustrating in the sense that we've got like top. Players and trendsetters. And everything else just feels like a delusion of that, right? Like we're just using them as inspiration for the most part. And then we are taking that inspiration, creating our own versions based on the fact that our clients like that type of look, style, feel, whatever. And then we are applying it. And so we kind of get this like cookie cutter look and feel. And it, and it, Frankly, just feels like there's a lack of creativity, mostly because I want to see how you got there. I want to see the process. I want to see the journey. I think that's the sweet spot of like what we do. I think that's the fun part of what we do. so I don't know if this resonates with any of you guys as designers, but I think if you take the pressure off, if you're a designer like me that just like really desires authenticity, I really want to be known as authentic. And it just feels inauthentic to post everyday only per perfect pictures. I think it's okay to like challenge that status quo and be like, what do I want to say to the world? What do I want to show to the world? Because the process isn't perfect. The process is frankly very fucking messy sometimes. And it's just one of those things that you have to be willing to contend with. And I think that by constantly bombarding people with this idea of perfection. We're setting ourselves up to fail. We're setting the industry up to fail. We're setting our clients up to fail because it's setting an unrealistic expectation of just like bliss all the time. And I do think that there are designers more and more showing behind the scenes on construction. I'm not to here to say that like nobody does that, but I wanna see more like in-process shots. I want to see the messy parts of life. I wanna see like the exciting. Job site visits that are like how you're figuring out all the pieces come together. And I think we've we are moving there, but we're just not there yet. And I'm tired of it feeling like perfection is the only thing. So I think that that's important. I think we should all work to like let people in and be a little bit vulnerable. And I think standing behind the perfection isn't good for anyone. It's not good for your like mental health, your psyche, whatever. So there's that. And then the other part about this, like, Performative perfection is the lines have gotten really blurred between what a designer does and what an influencer in the home sphere does. So there's now this like unrealistic expectation that anything I post, I'm gonna give you the link to, or I'm gonna like tell you what that source is. And I know most 90% of designers this will resonate with like. I'm not here to post what my materials are. but we get asked this question all the time. We get asked, what is this backsplash? What is where is that light fixture from? And look, if I wanted to give you all of those sources and put myself out of a job, I would put them at affiliate links and like link them and make that public. But that's not the purpose here. If you want the inspiration picture and you want that to become the thing that you're doing, source it yourself. And if you're a designer and you're looking for how to source those fixtures or those tiles, whatever, then you have to be very careful how you do that. there are times where I as a designer see what some other designer has done, what they've used, and I do reach out and I'm like, hey, I love this piece of furniture. Would you mind sharing the trade source with me so that we can set up our account and supply it on a project of ours? I would really appreciate it. If somebody replies and they're like, no, we don't share sources, still be kind. Be like, thank you so much for taking the time to respond. If they reply and they give you the trade source, be extra kind, like be a nice person and just be like, thank you so much for sharing that. I truly appreciate it. It's super helpful and I can't wait to get to put these products into our project as well. And I just think that, you know, we're like we live in this season of like everyone's being so entitled to like information because information is everywhere. It's easy to do. We can all Google image search something and get like 15 results that are similar within two seconds. And so if a human is taking the time to reply, if a human is taking the time to share that information, Be extra nice. Just be like a decent person. and just know that like it's thoughtful and it's kind and it's the right thing to do for the industry. So there's that. Another just like pain point in terms of this industry is like this idea of a competitiveness and that we have to like gatekeep how we do business. I can't tell you the number of designers that I have met with. Who I have tried to start a collective here in my small town because there are actually are a handful of designers here. Just none of them really have kind of the footprint that we have in our studio. And I truly am somebody that just wants community. So part of me explored this idea of like, maybe we have a collective where other interior designers can come here, rent us. We all share the source list. And then they can like see meetings out of here. We can share the space and I will get community because I just love this idea of community and friends and like having girlfriends. I think this stems from trauma in my childhood and not feeling like accepted and also just not feeling like I have my tribe. And so one of the things that I was hit with every time is gatekeeping and just an unwillingness to talk about what you do, how you do it, what is your pricing structure, what's your hourly rate, what's your favorite type of project? Do you like to work only in one style? Do you not? Like there's a million ways to differentiate. And I truly think that I could literally tell you step by step how I run my business. In fact, I've done that at like seminars in front of 200 people At Design Chicago or for other companies I've been asked to guest speak for. I've literally stood on stage and given our standard operating procedures, what software we use, how we use it, et cetera, et cetera. There is no reason why that information needs to be kept to just myself. Number one, anyone can find this information. I'm just giving you a faster path. Number two, you are you and I am me. There's only one of me, there's only one of you. So even if you follow that framework, the end result is going to be different because naturally we're two different people. And I think this industry just really struggles with this idea. People are afraid to talk about pricing. People are afraid to talk about business. People are afraid to talk about what's ugly and how it became a trend and what's not. And so I just would really love. To hear from like the designers that just like look at this industry and are just like, what the fuck is this? And so, if that's you, comment. And I just want to say too, I wanna acknowledge that it is a total privilege to be able to work on projects that have no budget and all the opportunity. But that is not 90% of designers in our sphere. 90% of us will have to do projects that aren't super glamorous because there's really only two pathways to design. There's either that you make a name for yourself, and your name is the thing that you get to brand and like is the thing that is the reason why people hire you and it's doesn't matter where that project is, you are the designer that they want, right? So those are your Jake Arnolds, those are your Amber Lewis, you know, et cetera, et cetera. They do projects all over because they have created a brand and a portfolio that people look at and they say, that's what I want. But if you are more like me, where you wanted to be able to stay in one place. I wanted to be able to raise my kids. I wanted to be present. I wanted to be able to pick my kids up after school and take days off when they don't have school. And I wanted to be able to serve just this market. Because frankly, it's easy. in order to do that, it is less about me and less about my portfolio and less about the projects I want to do and more about what does this market need? How do I get clients in this market? What do I say yes to? How do I be of service? And what do I do in a project? Doesn't necessarily align with something that I love or that I feel passionate about, but I'm passionate about being here and not traveling because I've got two kiddos at home that I manage and take care of myself. Okay, so if you're finding this content helpful or informative. I would so appreciate if you could consider subscribing to us and leaving a comment or a review just so that we can reach more people, reach more designers, and help elevate the design community. Thanks for tuning in. So if you're like me and you love design, but you want balance in your life that brings freedom, that brings peace, that brings all the things that we want when we're told, you know, you can have it all. And you really realize that you can't, then that's the path, right? Name, brand, mainstay, national level, travel everywhere to do those projects. Or serving a local market, knowing that you're not gonna have the most glamorous projects necessarily, but you get to choose the life that you want and more freedom around that. both of those are great. But once I got really clear about the fact that I am not wanting to travel a ton for my for my projects, I want to be home a lot because I'm a single mama that needs to be able to be home for my kids. when I looked at that like reality and I accepted that, it makes it very easy to let go of all of these like other expectations, performative expectations that are. They're in the industry. For example, I had a PR agent that I worked with for a couple of years. I think that that is a great move if you want national recognition and you want your brand to be branded and known on a national level. That makes total sense. I get it. but I don't think that that was the right move for me. I don't think that being an art digest helps Joe Smith down the road here. know where I am and how to find me and know how to like hire us. So I think once you're like smart and smart enough to like sit back and recognize what your goals are for your life outside of the studio, then there's like all this pressure of expectations and like performance that you no longer feel tied to because you're like not looking To be published all the time. You're not looking for like maximum exposure on social media. I think it's shocking to a lot of other designers when they see that our following is like, I don't know, right now it's like 4,600 people on Instagram. That's it. It's not big. And we do seven figures a year. I think that there's quite a few of us in that zone that just have figured out how to leverage what a community needs and make themselves kind of the mainstay. And so I just want to like, if you are somebody that really struggles with this idea of like performance, perfection, how we market, what we market, how how do we do this? Just know you don't have to do all the things. You don't. I think on one of my projects, I was like, this project is gonna make us like so big. It's an amazing project. And it was. I love that project. but it didn't matter. It didn't matter at the end of the day. It didn't get us like bigger projects. We marketed it. It wasn't picked up by magazines. and it was like discouraging. But again, when I process, like that goal doesn't serve me. And I like let that go. This very idea of like, I need to get to 10,000 followers. I need to do this or that. It just doesn't matter if you like know your why, figure out your business around that, and then figure out how to be of service. So I hope that this is just like an encouragement to you that like you don't have to do it all, you don't have to be it all, you don't have to be big on Instagram, unless that's your goal and that's what you want. In which case, like, great, do that. There are definitely ways to do that. I do think that it's more difficult to get to that tier of the market to become the Jake Arnold's, to become the Amber Lewis's. It's a lot more difficult to get to that rung than it is to just figure out how to make yourself essential in your community and leverage that and make money off of that. So if the goal is like being known, that's one thing. And then if the goal is like making money in an efficient way for yourself, that's a totally different thing. And I just think that that message gets convoluted. in our industry that you like aren't good enough if you don't have the best portfolio, or you're not good enough if you don't have X, Y, and Z published, or you're not listed on this, this, and this. The other thing that like really pissed me off after a while too was this expectation over exposure. I don't know if you guys all know this. If you're in the industry, you probably do, but if you're not in the industry, Then maybe not. but I will not and I refuse to pay for exposure. Do you know how many times magazines have reached out and said, we would like to write an advertorial for you, an editorial-looking ad. And I always committed to this idea that that was inauthentic and disingenuous. I find that really offensive and fake. If your work is good enough to be published, you should not have to. Pay to be there, except I get it. PR companies, they help leverage their connections, things like that. I get it. But if a magazine is like cold reaching out to you and being like, it's gonna cost $1,500 and we'll write this article about you. I don't even know how to process in my mind what that is and like why somebody would do it because it feels so fake. The other thing that I think is important to just like talk about for a second is this expectation over this like perfect team. this was something that I actually did myself in the first four couple years of team formation. I had like a very clear brand of my team. We all wore these Carhartt jumpsuits. We all like looked badass. We would do funny shit together. And the team was a big part of like the marketing message. I don't think that that necessarily was wrong. However, you don't have to have a big team to like be successful. I hope that you guys know that. Like literally, I did $1.7 million with a team of five. This year we're on track to do over a million dollars and it's just me and one other person. Part of that, what like I said, well in a different episode, we'll talk about it. Also very controversial. A lot of that has to do with leveraging AI. and then the second part of that is just finding the right team. But my point is, you don't have to have a giant frickin' team to Feel like you are accomplished. Like what what does that even mean? Believe me, it's way more stressful to have a team. So don't set yourself up to have to feel like you need to have a team in order to feel good about yourself. I just think that you wanna have community, but but not at the expense of what you need. And so it's just a tricky, it's all really tricky. To navigate in this industry. And it's just one of those things that's like, this is why we need to talk about these things. This is why we need to be able to have conversations. Perfect spaces, perfect design, blah, blah, blah. It's just offensive to me. to that end, like. I cannot for the life of me also reconcile design trends that are very obviously hideous that people love and they rave about. And you're like, wait, what what happened to design here? There's a difference between I think being creative, right? And and then like going overboard. I think of like two scenarios in this. This vein. number one being white subway tile. We all know that white subway tile was introduced early 2000s and it was like a trend forever. I can tell you when I go into a house what era their house was remodeled based on whether or not it has white subway tile. So I'm not here to dig at white subway tile. What I think is not smart is any design decision that dates your project off the jump. Like we should be the goal should be that it looks timeless and effortless and people come in and they're like, when did you do this? And of course there's trends. There's always gonna be like things that are trendy. but I think it's like frankly, I just think it's like silly when I see this like prairie chic cottage vibe and it's like floral wallpaper, floral upholstery, floral drapes. Floral bedding, floral rug. And it just looks like your grandma puked in a room and it's new. And I'm like, and then I see some, you know, some of those posts, it's like thousands of comments or hundreds of thousands of likes on certain ones. And they're like, this is incredible. I love this space. I love this space. And I'm like, this looks like I would be need to be at a mental institute after this because it. just looks like too much. And there's it's not even maximalism, like timeless maximalism. It's this trend that you're seeing trickle down into like Target's line recently with Studio McKee and like some of the prints and florals in there and like the prairie vibes. And I and I see it and I'm like, this just looks kitschy. This doesn't look timeless. This doesn't look creative. I think that there is like this huge gap in creativity That we fail to recognize as designers, that actually happens when you have the farmer that's redoing their house and they have very little means to do that. Or in my community, it looks like the teacher and the nurse that like own a house that they bought in our tiny community, they can barely afford that because a dump in Hood River is like a million dollars, and then they don't have the means to put in. you know, an extra million dollars to make it look nice. So there's like all of this creative work that has to come from how do we stretch this dollar into three and how do we make this look timeless? And I think that design, I was I was talking about this with a friend of mine. Design that is like limitless in terms of budget and risk in terms of longevity, meaning When you work for a client that has so much abundance, if they get tired of a space or something in the space, they can just rip it out without having to think about it. to design from that place versus designing for the everyday nurse, mom and pop shop owner, teacher, farmer, whatever, is so vastly different. And I do think that there's like Creativity in terms of like, I have no rules, so I get to be creative. And then there's also like I have so many restrictions that I really have to be creative. And I guess for me, I just really appreciate the very pragmatic functional design sphere that we kind of dwell in, where it's like the creativity is really different. And so if you are a designer that like Is like me that designs for the middle market, the average market, maybe the market that barely can afford you. It is super, super creative and critical work that you're doing. And I just want you to hear another designer say that they made it to seven figures in that arena and that it's beautiful and it's okay, even if the end result isn't like some. Giantly famous portfolio project. Frankly, 50% of our projects we don't shoot because they're not portfolio-winning projects. And that's okay. And I feel so thankful that we get to work on those projects. And I'm thankful that we have enough that we can market the rest. And so, all that to say, I just really would love to see conversation shift in this industry. I would love to see. More designers come forward and be like, you know what? I'm actually good if I don't get published into everything. I'm taking the pressure off myself. I just am gonna serve this market. I'm gonna do it well, and I'm gonna be proud of myself. So I don't know if this helps. I don't know if this resonates with you, but the goal of this episode really is to just remind everyone like none of us are perfect. We're all human and it's okay. It's beautiful and If you are somebody that struggles with the stress of perfection, just spend the time to figure out how to change some of those mindset patterns to accept who you are and let people into that because it's beautiful. So that's kind of the whole reason why we rebranded to Renee. I felt like structured my previous business name was. Good. It was a really good standalone name. People really liked it. It sounded very designy. but it didn't resonate with the reality of like how not rigid and fluid I am as a person. So Rene meaning reborn and Rene symbolizing that like small rebelliousness in me as a kid that my mom used to call me Renee when I was in trouble. that is the that's the essence of why we're all here. That's the essence of this podcast, and it's the essence of what I hope to carry forward in the studio, in the podcast, and anything else we do. So whatever that looks like for you, I I just sincerely hope we reach a different level of authentic authenticity in the industry and I hope that we can all just get over the comp competitive nature of this industry and know like you are enough. What you're doing is enough. And it's great and it's beautiful. So if this, if you, if this episode resonated with you and you kind of are over the performatively perfect industry within the interiors, please like and share and like spread the word. there's nothing like nuts and bolts about business in this episode, but it's one that's like just on my heart to share because I think. I think it's just stressful to be in this industry. And I think it's very stressful to feel like you have to be perfect all the time. So girl, let your hair down. Like do the things that maybe are considered like, I don't know, a little unprofessional. Like let your clients into that and just like take the pressure off. Like you only live once. You get to make your business yours and whatever that looks like for you. I just hope that you go forth and you just own that with confidence. So thanks for tuning in guys. Take care. We're dreamers, don't care what other people say. We live it like this will be a final day. We're dreamers.