Question:  Hi Lindsay, I hope you’re doing well!

I’m looking into submitting one of my residential projects for publication and would love your advice. Are there any magazines, online publications, or other platforms you’d recommend approaching?

The project is already on my website and Instagram. I understand some publications prefer exclusivity or want to be the first to feature a project, so I’m curious how that affects my options and which publications might still be a good fit.

I’d also love to hear what worked well for you when you were practicing, and any advice on putting together a submission or approaching editors.

Thank you!

Answer: Oh, I love that you're thinking about this!

So, my strategy was actually a little different. I never approached publications directly myself. Instead, I was very intentional about the photographers I chose to work with.

I specifically sought out photographers who were already shooting for publications and had established relationships with editors. They understood what publications were looking for, what made a project editorially interesting, and how to pitch it. They would handle the submissions on my behalf.

That was always my approach, and it's something I'd encourage you to think about for future projects!

For this particular project, here's what I'd suggest:

1. Start with your photographer.

I'd reach out and ask whether they have any editorial relationships or experience submitting projects for publication. They may already know editors or have suggestions about where your project would be a good fit.

2. Be strategic about where you want to be featured.

Since you're in Vancouver, I'd absolutely look at Western Living first. I'd also consider House & Home, Style at Home, and potentially Mountain Living, depending on the project's aesthetic.

But I'd encourage you to think beyond just getting published. Where are your ideal clients looking for design inspiration? Which publications would help establish you as an authority in the particular market you want to serve?

That's where I'd focus your efforts.

3. Don't worry too much about having already shared the project.

You're right that some publications prefer exclusivity, but having a project on your own website or Instagram doesn't necessarily mean it's no longer eligible.

I'd be upfront about where the project has appeared and ask about their editorial requirements before submitting it elsewhere.

For future projects, if publication is a priority, I'd recommend holding off on sharing the full photography until you've explored editorial opportunities.

4. Think about the STORY behind the project.

Editors aren't necessarily just looking for beautiful rooms. They're looking for an interesting story.

What was unique about this project? What challenges did you solve? What makes the home or the client's experience particularly interesting?

I'd put together a very simple pitch with a short description of the project, what makes it noteworthy, and a selection of your strongest photographs. You don't need to overcomplicate it!

And one final thought: I'd encourage you to approach getting published as part of your larger marketing strategy, rather than an end goal in itself.

A beautiful feature is wonderful, but the real value is in how you leverage that credibility to attract more of the clients and projects you want.

Hope that helps! I'd love to hear where you end up submitting!

Lindsay

Question: Unfortunately, I haven't had any work in the past 12 months.

I'd really like some personalized help developing a weekly plan for my business, including guidance on which activities I should be focusing on.

Here's what I'm currently doing:

• Scanning Meetup.com for networking events in my area, particularly in real estate, development, rentals, etc.
• Attending 3–10 networking events and/or real estate open houses per month.
• Sharing what I do in everyday conversations (approximately 2–5 per day, often in furniture stores).
• Responding to job postings for junior and senior in-house designers, as I need to generate income.

Other proactive networking activities include:

• Attending Realtor listing open houses and caravans to connect with professionals working with buyers and sellers. I've met approximately 30–40 people in the industry this way.
• Visiting various paid membership networking groups to meet local professionals.
• Having coffee meetings with approximately eight of these professionals.

Unfortunately, none of these activities has resulted in a paid in-home consultation.

I'd really appreciate help creating a weekly "job description" for myself. I have the time, as I'm not currently working another job, but I often feel overwhelmed and unclear about which activities to prioritize.

I understand that networking and marketing are investments in my future business, but I'm also feeling pressure to focus on the activities most likely to generate income quickly.

You often talk about planting seeds for future clients, releasing the outcome, and approaching conversations with curiosity. I understand that philosophy, but I'm finding it difficult to apply when I need to financially support myself now. I really need income sooner rather than later, and I'm reaching a point where I may have to reconsider this career if things don't change.

So my question is: What other strategies or approaches could I be trying, alongside what I'm already doing, to start generating income now? I'm open to both small and large projects. 

Ultimately, I just need work.

I'd really appreciate the opportunity to work together on a more specific plan for my situation.

I also have some ideas I've tried in the past that haven't generated clients, but I'd love to hear your suggestions and perspective first.

Answer:

First, thank you for being so open with me. I can appreciate how frustrating and discouraging it must feel to be putting this much time and energy into your business without seeing the results you want. Especially when there's financial pressure involved.

I also hear you wanting more personalized guidance, and I take that feedback seriously. I absolutely want to support you in working through this. But part of my role as your coach is also to help you develop the skills, confidence, and ability to evaluate challenges, make decisions, and find solutions independently. Because ultimately, I don't just want to help you solve the problems you're facing today. I want to help you become the kind of business owner who knows how to solve them for herself moving forward.

As I read through your email, a few things really stand out to me, and I want to offer you some coaching around them.

First, I can see that you're taking a lot of action. But what I'm curious about is how much of that action you're evaluating.

One of the most important skills we need to develop as entrepreneurs is the ability to think critically about our businesses, identify what's working (and what's not), and make strategic decisions about what to do next.

Because entrepreneurship, in many ways, is one big experiment.

We come up with a theory about what we think might work. We test it. We collect data. We evaluate. And then we adjust.

Sometimes we're right. Sometimes we're wrong. But either way, we're learning something that informs our next decision.

Looking at your list, I can see you’ve taken a lot of action.  But here's what I'm curious about. How many of those interactions have you actually evaluated?

When I was first building my design business, I evaluated EVERYTHING.

Every consultation. Every sales conversation. Every opportunity that didn't turn into a client.

I wanted to understand what was happening. What worked? What didn't? What did I say? How did my energy impact the conversation that day? What could I have communicated differently? What did I learn about the person I was speaking with?

I didn't want to just keep repeating the same activities and hoping for a different result.

So I want to challenge your thinking a little. Instead of concluding, "This strategy isn't working," I want you to consider a different question:

"What am I not working?" Not from a place of blame or criticism, but from a place of taking ownership.

Because when we decide that the networking isn’t working, we can unintentionally put all the power outside ourselves.

But when we ask, "What could I be doing differently? What am I missing? What can I control here?" we give ourselves something to work with.

That doesn't mean every unsuccessful interaction is your fault. There are plenty of things outside our control. But we want to become exceptionally good at identifying the things we CAN influence.

And I want to look specifically at your networking. You've clearly invested a lot of time into meeting people. But I'd love to understand what you think about networking itself.

When you walk into an event, what are you thinking?

Are you excited to meet people? Are you genuinely curious about them, their businesses, and the challenges they're facing?

Or are you walking in wondering whether this is finally going to be the event where you find a client? What kind of energy are you bringing into those conversations? 

Are you showing up as someone who is confident in the value she brings? Someone who's genuinely interested in other people and has something valuable to contribute?

Or are you approaching the conversations from a place of needing something from the person you're speaking with?

I ask because there can be a big difference between the two.

I would challenge you to walk into every room with the intention of being the most INTERESTED person in the room.

Not the person who talks the most about what she does. Not the person trying to make the most connections or hand out the most business cards. The person who is genuinely curious about other people.

And I'd encourage you to evaluate every single networking experience afterward.

Who did you speak with? What did you learn? How did you show up? Were you in ‘GET’ or ‘TAKER’ energy, or genuinely showing up from a place of service? What could you have done differently? Was there an opportunity to follow up or invite someone to work with you?

Because attending another 20 networking events won't necessarily help if you're approaching them in exactly the same way.

The second thing I want to challenge is the tendency to get stuck searching for the HOW. I see this all the time. We start believing there's a perfect strategy, a perfect schedule, or a particular set of activities that will finally produce the results we're looking for.

And when we're not seeing those results, we go searching for the next answer. What should I do? What should my weekly schedule look like? What's going to get me a client the fastest?

But I want you to consider whether searching for the next strategy is preventing you from learning from the strategies you've already tried. Because I don't necessarily think you need MORE activities.

I think we need to understand why your current activities aren't producing results. And I want YOU to be actively involved in figuring that out.

So here's my first assignment for you:

I want you to come up with your top three theories about why you haven't been able to turn these activities into paid consultations. 

For example, perhaps you're meeting people who aren't currently looking for design services. Maybe you're meeting the right people, but you're not creating interest in you and what you do. Or maybe you're having good conversations, but you're not making clear invitations for people to take the next step.

Those are just examples. I want to hear what YOU think is happening based on your actual experiences.

And then I want you to ask yourself: What could I test or change to see whether my theory is correct? That's how we begin to make progress.

The third thing I want to explore is your current consultation model.

One possibility I'd like us to consider is temporarily offering complimentary consultations while you're working on building demand for your services.

Now, you know I'm a big believer in the value of paid consultations. But I also believe we need to be strategic about where our business is today, not just where we want it to be.

And if you haven't booked a single paid consultation in 12 months, I think it's worth testing whether removing that initial financial commitment might help you create more opportunities to get in front of clients.

That doesn't mean offering unlimited free design advice or giving away your expertise. We would need to be intentional about what that complimentary consultation includes, who it's for, and how it creates an opportunity to discuss working together on a paid project.

And importantly, we'd need to evaluate the results.Are you getting more interest? Are people booking? Are those conversations converting into paying clients?

It's a theory worth testing, not a permanent change I'm suggesting you make without evidence.

The fourth thing I want to discuss is the financial pressure you're putting on your business right now.

You mentioned needing income yesterday. And I want to acknowledge that. You have real financial responsibilities, and I'm certainly not suggesting that you simply release the outcome and hope everything works out.

But I do want you to consider how that pressure might be influencing the way you're showing up.

When we desperately NEED someone to hire us, we can unintentionally bring that need into our sales conversations. 

Instead of being genuinely curious about the person in front of us, we're thinking about whether they're going to become a client.

Instead of focusing on how we can serve them, we're focused on whether we're going to get the sale. And sometimes that urgency gets in the way of the very thing we're trying to accomplish.

One of the things I teach is approaching sales from a place of service. Our job is to understand people's needs, determine whether we can help, and communicate the value of what we offer. Not to convince everyone to hire us. So I'd love for you to reflect on this as well. Are you showing up to these conversations genuinely curious about the people you're meeting, or is there a sense that you NEED something to come from them?

There's no judgment here. But I do think it's worth exploring.

And this brings me to something else.

I wonder whether creating some financial stability outside your design business might actually be one of the most supportive things you could do for yourself right now.

Maybe that's part-time employment, contract work with another design firm, or another source of income that allows you to cover your immediate needs. I wouldn't necessarily see that as giving up on your business.

Sometimes we need to take some of the financial pressure OFF our business so we have the space to build it intentionally. So we're not making every decision from urgency or expecting every conversation to turn into a client.

And so we can give ourselves the opportunity to experiment, learn, and develop our skills without the pressure of needing immediate results from every action.

Now, coming back to your request for a weekly plan.

I absolutely want to help you create more clarity around where you're spending your time.

But I don't want to create a job description that simply keeps you busy.

I want us to create a plan based on what we're learning, rather than simply filling your calendar with more things to do.

So here's where I'd love you to begin:

1. Evaluate your networking. Think back to your recent interactions (not a group of them - but hone in on a specific conversion as it’s important we look at all of them in isolation). What happened in that conversation? What were you thinking and feeling? What did you learn? What would you do differently?
2. Come up with your top three theories. Why do you believe your current efforts aren't producing paid consultations? What evidence supports those theories?
3. Identify what you'd like to test next. If you approached the next 30 days as an experiment, what would you change? How would you measure whether that change was effective?
4. Consider your immediate financial needs. What opportunities might be available to create more financial stability while you continue building your design business?

Bring me your thinking on these things, and let's work through them together. We can use your evaluation to develop a more focused weekly plan, identify what to test, and review the results.

And I want to be clear: I don't expect you to have all the answers.

That's what coaching is for.

But I do want you to develop the ability to come to coaching with your own observations, theories, and ideas so we can build on your thinking together.

Because ultimately, I don't want you to become someone who needs a coach to tell her exactly what to do every week. I want you to become the kind of business owner who knows how to figure things out. Someone who can make decisions, take action, evaluate the results, and trust herself to keep moving forward.

That's a skill that will serve you far beyond booking your next client.

Lindsay

Question: Lindsay, I keep feeling like I need more followers, more website traffic, or a bigger audience before I can consistently book projects. How do I know if I actually need more leads—or if I'm just not converting the people already paying attention?

Answer: This is one of the most common thoughts I see from designers.

And honestly - Most of the time, it's the wrong problem.

When designers aren't getting the results they want, their brain immediately goes to:

"I need more people."

More followers.

More website visitors.

More exposure.

More leads.

But what I've found—both in my own business and coaching designers—is that most designers are dramatically underestimating the opportunity already sitting in front of them.

Think about it.

You probably already have:

• Past inquiries who never moved forward
• Past clients who could refer you
• Industry connections who know people starting projects
• Email subscribers
• Instagram followers
• People quietly watching your stories every day
• Friends, neighbours, and community members who know what you do

The question isn't always:

"How do I find more people?"

The question is:

"How do I better engage the people already paying attention?"

Because there is a huge difference between having an audience and creating demand.

Creating demand means helping people move from awareness...

To engagement...

To consultation...

To becoming a client.

And that's where most of your power lives.

In fact, I often tell designers:

If I took away your ability to get a single new follower this year, could you still hit your revenue goal?

Most people immediately panic.

But that's the exercise.

Because if the answer is no, you've probably become overly dependent on finding new people instead of serving and converting the people already in your world.

The designers who create consistent demand aren't necessarily doing more marketing.

They're creating more opportunities for engagement.

They're having more conversations.

They're making stronger invitations.

They're showing up more consistently.

They're helping people take the next step.

So the next time your brain says:

"I need more leads..."

Pause and ask yourself:

"Have I fully exhausted the opportunities already around me?"

Because more often than not, the next client isn't hiding from you.

They're already watching.

They just need a reason to step forward.