High-End Interior Design Visibility: Global Strategy 💎 | Premium Marketing & SEO Authority Daniela Furtado

Tired of hiding your talent in the digital jungle? 🌿 In this refreshing episode of the Beyond Interior Design Podcast, we're diving deep with SEO expert Daniela Furtado into the world of online visibility! Because let's be honest - what's the point of creating stunning designs if no one can find them? 🔍

🔥 What's inside this episode?

The hilarious truth about why top designers remain invisible online 🙈 How to make Google crave your portfolio (without selling your soul!) 💫 SEO tricks that even the most tech-allergic designer can implement 🎯 The art of staying authentic in the digital world (yes, it's possible!) ⚖️ Strategic ways to make your unique design voice heard 🎨

Did you know: Some of the most talented designers are as hard to find online as a needle in a haystack? Time to change that!

💡 Why you should listen:

Whether you're struggling with online visibility or ready to take your digital presence to the next level - this episode is your roadmap to success. Daniela breaks down complex SEO concepts into practical, actionable steps. Because why make it complicated when it can be fun?

Don't miss this game-changing conversation about making your design expertise visible to the world—hit play now! 🎧

📌 Connect with us:

Follow us for more interior design insights:
Instagram: @beyondinteriordesign
Website: www.beyondinteriordesign.club

🎧 Where to listen:

Find this episode on your favorite platforms:
Spotify
Apple Podcasts
Buzzsprout

📌 Connect with us:

Follow us for more interior design insights:

• Instagram: @beyondinteriordesign
• Website: www.beyondinteriordesign.club

🎧 Where to listen:

Find this episode on your favorite platforms:

• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts
• Buzzsprout

Transcript

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Welcome to a new episode of the beyond interior design podcasts, where we transform interior design studios from pretty pictures into high end businesses and create real that create real impact.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: In today's episode. We are diving into something that gives many premium designers, headaches, digital marketing that actually works for the luxury, segment.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: meet the founder of findable digital marketing in Toronto with her contagious energy and refreshingly direct approach. She's on a mission to make marketing for premium designers as simple and effective as possible without losing its exclusivity.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: And honestly, her no nonsense approach is exactly what the luxury design world needs right now. So get ready for a conversation that will flip your perspective on a luxury design marketing.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Let's jump right in, Daniela Fortado.

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Daniela Furtado: Whoa! What an introduction! Wow!

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Thank you. Welcome for having a well being guest in our podcast.

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Daniela Furtado: Thank you for having me.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah, no? Well, welcome today.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Special subject, luxury.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: So the truth about luxury. What was your personal? Aha! Moment about luxury? That's changed. Everything.

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Daniela Furtado: Hmm!

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Daniela Furtado: So I had been running the agency for a couple of years, and I was on a call with one of our clients. She's a marketing director for a furniture company. And she manages for it has, like 4 sister companies, or it's a group of 4 companies.

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Daniela Furtado: And she said something that made the light bulb in my head go off and kind of started this whole journey. This curiosity I have for luxury marketing, she said. We hired a new sales director, and he gave us a little bit of criticism

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Daniela Furtado: on how we were positioning ourselves. He said that we were positioning ourselves as premium, but not luxury.

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Daniela Furtado: And I stopped. And I said, Yeah, exactly. What's the difference?

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Daniela Furtado: She goes? Oh, she like her! Her shoulders drop, and she lets out this huge sigh of relief. She goes honestly, Daniela, I don't know. I'm glad you asked, cause I'm also the same thing.

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Daniela Furtado: And so the the 2 of us, her and I. We meet up every once in a while for coffee. She's not an active client anymore. We're not doing any projects right now when she needs something she comes to us, but we keep in touch and we shared resources with one another on what is luxury marketing? What does it really mean? And

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Daniela Furtado: And yeah, that's how it all started.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Well, later on we're going to dive deeper in because you didn't tell us yet what is different. But we will, we will find out, well, you saw my face like, well, yeah, what's the difference? Premium luxury? So, yeah, this is a. This was a major change. How your definition of luxury involves. Well, since you started

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: investigating luxury, that this is this is the moment where it all changed. Where like, okay, this is what I need to do.

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Daniela Furtado: Yeah, I started researching. I, I researched and was just hungry to learn. I read every podcast. I read it. I read every book, every article, listen to every podcast or video I could find on the topic. And last summer I wrote a whole essay about it on our website. And that's what we're here to talk about.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Definitely because I saw you did your research. It was like, I need to speak to Daniela. She knows something, and she dove in a kind of subject we're always we're talking about. We're now episode 44, 45, and we all talk about luxury, most of the episodes. But in the end it was like.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: I I don't know know really what luxury so great. Julia?

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: can you share? Yeah. Well, what what is the biggest misconception about marketing or luxury. Clients.

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Daniela Furtado: Hmm!

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Daniela Furtado: I think there are quite a few. I think the problem starts with exactly what you you alluded to is that we don't really have a clear definition of what marketing is marketing luxury. We don't have a clear idea of what luxury is, because it's changed so much over the years luxury used to be reserved for aristocrats.

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Daniela Furtado: dated back to the 17th century in Europe, and nowadays, because of industrialization and the creation of the middle class, it is more accessible than ever, but it is also very vague.

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Daniela Furtado: It does it.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yep.

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Daniela Furtado: Is it the quality? Is it the price point? Is it availability? We're not really sure. And so it's almost up to every design studio, every business to define what luxury means for them, and to be a little bit more specific.

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Daniela Furtado: So I think.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: That would because a lot a lot of interior designers are calling themselves high end interior designers or luxury designers or premium designers, without knowing actually what it is, but it well, it sounds cool, or you might think you are attracting, attracting your ideal clients

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: most of the time I speak designers, and they say, what is a high end client.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: and it mostly comes down to with a big budget.

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Daniela Furtado: Yes.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: They mean they have a lot of money. Yeah. But in the end, what is? Yeah, luxury is not about this, only this big budget. So can you. Can you share examples of of design firms that

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: success successfully attracting luxury, clients.

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Daniela Furtado: Yeah, we have a handful I think most of our clients actually are in

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Daniela Furtado: would consider themselves premium, high end or luxury. One case study that I often refer to the most because she's 1 of our.

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Daniela Furtado: She's a client that we worked with the longest and very early on. So I have a lot of years of of experience and stories working with her. Her name is Jude. She's here in Toronto, and she has a design firm called Sansa Interiors. We met when we were both starting our businesses through a business accelerator, specifically for female owned businesses.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: I don't.

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Daniela Furtado: Casually give her advice would pick my brain. And then, about a year later, of this, this business friendship that we had, she hired us and we worked with her on a monthly retainer for 2 years and

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Daniela Furtado: shaped we we I'm proud to say that I shaped a lot of her. Her business, specifically in the beginning, was about positioning. She was doing a little bit of everything she wanted. Big budgets like you said she wanted to be luxury. She and I think a lot of designers may relate to this. She wanted to be luxury, and she wanted the big budgets because it gives the most creative freedom. And I think that's

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Daniela Furtado: that's an appeal for a lot of designers. That's why you get into this profession because you want to create

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah, you want. You want, you don't want to be the. You don't want to have limits

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: because of budget. Yeah, alright. So yeah, take it. Take us further on this transformational well journey.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah, yeah.

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Daniela Furtado: So, Jude, when we started working together, she had done literally a little bit of everything from her portfolio, but also from her marketing. I mean that in every sense of the word, and I have a lot of admiration for her, because that sort of

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Daniela Furtado: that.

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Daniela Furtado: that determination and her willingness to take risks, and experiment is really great, but it also was a little bit of a disadvantage. It was kind of hurting her a little bit, because it meant that she wasn't focused. So in her.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: You mean? Yeah, you you mean, yeah, portfolio was like residential and hospitality and offices. And you mean that.

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Daniela Furtado: Exactly, but.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: All right.

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Daniela Furtado: Teaching marketing. So her portfolio exactly like she was doing some condos and apartments and some new builds.

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Daniela Furtado: She was doing a little bit of furnishing a little bit of renovations. She was also doing a little bit of commercial. She was doing some offices, some co-working spaces, and some hospitality restaurants and cafes. So her portfolio was a little bit of a potpourri, and it's hard to position yourself as the best when you're doing a little bit of everything. Usually when we think of someone that is luxury premium, the best they're specialized. They're an expert in something, and that's how they're known as the go to in that.

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Daniela Furtado: So that was the foundation was was, okay. What do you want to be known for? And I know you can't say no, because you're not in a position to start saying no to projects you got to take them on. But that doesn't mean you have to show all of them on your portfolio. You can be a little bit selective or intentional or strategic. Whatever words you want to use with how you market yourself, because

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Daniela Furtado: what you put out there will attract more of the same. So it started with that. That was the 1st step.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Wonderful. Yeah. Step 2. Yes, of course. Of course, everybody. I think everybody is now like, Oh, tell me the secret. What do I need to do with my portfolio, and I know for sure that a lot of people listening right now and said, yes, I like everything this. So I'm

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: I'm still doing everything because I like it.

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Daniela Furtado: But then you have a problem. Right?

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Daniela Furtado: Yes, yes.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: We have a problem.

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Daniela Furtado: It's not very profitable, either, as a business to do a little bit of everything sometimes

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Daniela Furtado: it can seem like it's boring, but

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Daniela Furtado: as someone that's specialized. I don't find it boring. Personally, I find getting deeper means that you have more of an impact. It can be more intellectually stimulating.

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Daniela Furtado: and if it does get boring and sometimes work does get boring, it's not exciting and fun. 24, 7. But that's okay. At least, then I can create processes. Things can work without me. A project just starts to come. I don't have to constantly chase projects. I start to build a reputation a lot faster, and projects come to me instead of me chasing them, and then I can find fun in other areas like in my personal life through hobbies. But I'm sorry you asked for. Step 2.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: No, but exactly this. The reason you talk about already the result. But that's very important. Every I I never met an interior designer who is not passionate. Maybe maybe you have, but I never. I never know they are all, or they are so busy they are always in a burnout, so they

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: think they might like the head of the profession anymore. But that's not true. They don't like the stress level that comes with it, or the lack of structure in the business. They all like their business, so much so that could not be the case of not continuing no.

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Daniela Furtado: No, I've never. I've never met a a board interior designer, but I've met lots of interior designers that don't want to specialize because they're afraid of being bored

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Daniela Furtado: on that.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: That's the word right?

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Daniela Furtado: Yeah.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Afraid to choose.

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Daniela Furtado: Hmm, yes.

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Daniela Furtado: with Jude, that's what we did. So I really put her, you know. I pinned her against the corner, and I said, you can't keep doing this. You gotta choose. And we negotiated. We chose 2 instead of you know. I think she had. Like 5 different types of projects. We narrowed it down to 2,

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Daniela Furtado: and we agreed that with time, then she could separate it, and or maybe even choose one. And that seems realistic. So we chose residential new build homes in the suburbs of Toronto.

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Daniela Furtado: and then we also chose cafes specifically. So we that was the foundation that was the second step was to create 2 pages on the website under service. We created 2 service pages, one for residential, one for cafes, and it spoke to homeowners and cafe owners, and then from there we looked at her portfolio, and we removed any projects that did not align.

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Daniela Furtado: Did it mean that she had fewer projects? Yes, but it meant that they popped a lot more, and we could take more time to tell the stories better. So going forward, she decided to only photograph projects that aligned with her long term positioning and her long term goals. So this meant that she could put her marketing dollars where it really mattered.

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Daniela Furtado: It also. The next thing that we did was we decided to tell stories about these specific projects. We even created an almost like hierarchy system. So we would give projects a score. We would have this scorecard, and we would look for different things like confidentiality. The size of the project, the budget so on and so forth, and we would give projects a score. And so, if it really fit with the long term positioning and goals.

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Daniela Furtado: then we would do all the things right? We would. We would hire a professional photographer. We would hire a professional copywriter. We create a case study on the website, 12 blog posts and and videos and for social media. But if it was lower, then it didn't need to be professionally photographed. We could just go in with our own camera and capture it and use it for social media. But it didn't have to live on the website.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yep. Yep.

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Daniela Furtado: And and this made her marketing efforts so much more streamlined and strategic before she was doing like, I said, a little bit of everything in her marketing as well. She was doing

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Daniela Furtado: flyers like mail, direct mail flyers. She was doing billboards. She was doing blog posts. She was doing Youtube videos, social media ads pitching to press. She would do something for 3 months and then get frustrated that she wasn't seeing results, drop it and then move on to something else. But with this we

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Daniela Furtado: we were doing what mattered, and we stuck to something long enough where she could actually see results.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah, wonderful. Yeah, I think you you're offering a great structure because most of the people are really creatives and me as well. I made some huge mistakes in the beginning, because I like new is delicious. New is cool, new is fresh, exciting. So what you're telling me it was exactly the case. I had a business I liked residential. Oh, there came oh, there was an office! Oh, there was hospitality!

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Oh, so you did everything.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: And then you were focusing like, Oh, I want to invest more in this hospitality thing. And you you did a hey? You designed something or cool article, or whatever. But then well, it was not exciting anymore. And you shift your perspective to another section.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: If you do that for years, you're losing money, losing energy. You don't. You don't grow

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: because you don't go in depth. I really liked your your opinion about that one that you don't get bored if you go in depth on one specific area. It's wonderful. You can detail so much. You can become, you become the expert because you know everything about it.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: And that's where you get the freedom on creative wise to create your best projects ever.

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Daniela Furtado: And you're start to compound. It takes time to see it, but it's I describe it like a flywheel like you take a project on you you do the service, and I'm sure from her I don't know the details, because I'm not working with her on a day to day basis. But I'm sure working with cafes all the time. She starts to create efficiencies in her operations. It's just inevitable, or she starts to learn how to communicate to clients better, because probably the same questions and concerns come up.

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Daniela Furtado: So you you get better at delivering the service, and then you now are more prepared with your marketing. You know exactly what to say in the marketing for it to ring true with people, and the same with the sales. Call so then your conversion rates usually go get a lot higher, and also the inquiries start coming to you more naturally as well. So after 4 years, I can tell you. Actually, the numbers. So we started working with Jude in 2022 was like the full year, or we are

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Daniela Furtado: the end of 2021. So in 2021, she got 18 inquiries, and in 2022 she got 71 increase, and then in 2023, she got 133 inquiries, so.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Wow!

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Daniela Furtado: And she told me a story that I really like.

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Daniela Furtado: I think, illustrates it so well. So she had about 2 or 3 case studies in the very beginning, all related to cafes. So what in one of the things that we did and and your listeners can go to her website and see this for themselves. If they want examples is she would take photos of the cafes, and we would create a case study. So this is not a portfolio.

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Daniela Furtado: Get like, wait.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: No, not look! Look at this pretty picture. Look at this pretty restaurant. No, you want to know the why behind it.

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Daniela Furtado: So we would

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Daniela Furtado: we would have a short description of the project. We would outline the budget, the size and the location

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Daniela Furtado: and then we would go into show more photos. We use photos to break up all the sections. But the sections were things like the design concept what the client wanted, how we approached it. We would even show snapshots or pictures of the construction and blueprints and the mood board, the planning

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Daniela Furtado: some of the challenges that came up and how we resolved them. And then, lastly, a testimonial. So we're really walking people through the before, the during and the after. And this also educates prospect clients of what to expect. You like this project. You like that. This is the price tag that was involved. This is the typical timeline. This is how it works. So when they're coming to you on a sales call, they're a little bit more primed. So we did that with 3 of her case studies, all related to cafes.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Just 3.

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Daniela Furtado: We did with just 3. That's what she had at the time.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Okay, wonderful. Yeah. So you don't have to have a big portfolio. You can just start with projects. You have.

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Daniela Furtado: With time, you know, if one of those 3 you're not. You know they were really small. You're not very proud of them. When you get more you can cycle out the the old.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Mercy!

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Daniela Furtado: Yeah, then she reposted that on social media, so one project would be like 12 social media posts, and one of the stories she told me of how she landed. 1 1 job is she was posting about cafe interior design, using the hashtags, talking about it quite frequently. Someone saw

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Daniela Furtado: saw the Instagram Post then went to her website, thinking, Who is this person? They saw the case study. They read through it, and they thought great. She understands this business. She understands how to design a cafe that is aligned with the brand. If you have multiple locations, she understands the permitting process.

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Daniela Furtado: She understands our needs when it comes to take out, and how to design a restaurant for uber eats or dash door dash, or whatever it is, but also accommodate people that are sitting in. She gets it. She gets my.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah. So in other words.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: the this prospect is looking at your portfolio, and the only thing they are thinking is like she or he understands me.

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Daniela Furtado: Right.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: That's it, right?

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Daniela Furtado: Exactly, and they booked the call with her already kind of

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Daniela Furtado: some way, making the decision. They already kind of knew that they wanted to hire her, but you know, meet her and get to know her just in case. And they that's how she was getting projects.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: What was the the biggest resistance of fear that you see? Yeah, that the designer saw in this scenario, because you could tell her like, Hey, you need to choose, and you need to focus, and you need to. But but then the mind comes in, and it's like, no, no, not me. I cannot do it. It's too early, or whatever the devil says, what was what was the the biggest?

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah, for your resistance before. So you have the breakthrough.

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Daniela Furtado: It was that it was the fear of specializing, afraid to say No to projects. When you're in a position where you need the money, or you have big goals, and you want to say yes to everything. Jude specifically wasn't so afraid of being bored some. I've heard that from other designers for her. It was the fear of saying No to money, that is, you know.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Huh!

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Daniela Furtado: It's right there within your reach. Another fear that comes up. This didn't come up with Jude, but with other interior designers, is they are very brand conscious, and sometimes are resistant to to doing anything, or they have to look at everything that comes out. And and that creates a bottleneck.

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Daniela Furtado: This perfectionism, I guess, is what that that is.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yes, that's a common yeah, common disease, as I could say as a designer, they they would like, they love to call themselves perfectionists.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: But actually, you're sabotaging. If you do it with the business, you have a problem, because, hey, you need to be really open to test, tweak and see, see what's going on. If you are a perfectionist in your designs. Perfect. But sometimes it's better to let go what you already think you need to do with your business. That's something else. Right? Yeah.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah. So yeah, you gave us already a lot of really practical insights that designers can do start implementing tomorrow. So I I like that. It's really yeah. It's practical. It's doable. You could start with it tomorrow if you're ready. So thanks for that. Yeah. So what? What would you say to

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: to the yeah. The most effective strategy to attract

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: your ideal client is actually focusing and only talking and communicating about that topic, their specific problem area.

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Daniela Furtado: Exactly the hard part, though, is figuring out who you want your target customers to be. It's a mix of

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Daniela Furtado: you know. What have you already done, and what you enjoyed, and what is what?

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Daniela Furtado: Who actually is willing to pay for for your work? And when you're just starting out, it's hard to know that you're kind of going into a blind. You're guessing. And you know a lot of business books or consultants, and Gurus will tell you to just just choose one. But that's really, I think in practice that's not realistic. And so I tell people, okay, fine, choose 2, choose 3,

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Daniela Furtado: but do it with the intention of eliminating, or at least separating.

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Daniela Furtado: Jude is coming to a place. I don't know if she's gonna do it this year, but very close, I know, because I still keep in touch with her. She! She does the marketing in house, and we just advise her or consult her on a project basis.

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Daniela Furtado: but I know that she is at a point where she now wants to separate the residential and the cafes, and on and create 2 different websites. So.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yes.

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Daniela Furtado: Sansa residential.com and sansa cafes.com, or something like that.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah, I think that's really the way to go. Because well, the funny thing to get back to this focus, it's a few weeks ago it was in this kind of car boot sale or secondhand market, and if you have, nothing is organized on these markets, it's not like. Here are all the books here, all this mirrors here, all the you know. If you really want to find the real treasures you need to focus.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: So for me personally, it's

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: undoable to have 3 objects in mind and try to search for it in this mess of valuable products or cheap products, or whatever it's impossible. But when you go in with one focus like round one, I'm going over this market, and I'm looking for a mirror.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: You will see probably every mirror at least 80 90%.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: You are focusing on that mirror. So your outcome is you end up with at least a few mirror mirrors that are really what you're looking for or coming close. Or maybe you have other ideas about mirrors, because you saw different mirrors. If you go in with 3 objects in mind, and you're looking for mirrors and for a chair and for a lamp.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: That's where your mind goes crazy. You are tired. It's impossible. Well, I find it out. It was the same case. Study, as you say, with focus, but then on a car boot sale. It was impossible for me to have a good outcome. When I was focusing on 3 objects on this market with one wonderful quick round all the mirrors. This is what I this is my favorite. Then I make a second round. I'm focusing on the other on the chairs.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: came up with a chair, and then round 3 for the lights that worked really? Well, it's exactly the same with marketing with your portfolio. If you're focusing on one thing, all the stories come up.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: all the visuals, everything. What you if you're walking on the street and you see a cafe, and you're focusing on cafes, you will see the cafe

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: it's like, don't think, don't think at a rep at a pink elephant course. You're thinking about a pink elephant something like this? Right? Is it a stupid example? Or can you relate to that.

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Daniela Furtado: Relatable. I think.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah.

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Daniela Furtado: Run a business that is well positioned.

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Daniela Furtado: It's already difficult to run a business like period, you know, and when you

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Daniela Furtado: positioning, I think it's it makes everything in efficient from the operation side. It makes it easier for you to hire people, train them. You'll have more streamlined sop standard operating processes, and it's easier for your teammates to to get on board and understand you're not reinventing the wheel every single time. It also makes it easier for you to connect with your target customer, because you understand, they can feel like.

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Daniela Furtado: okay, you get it, you know. I don't have to explain everything to you. And from a marketing point of view it just

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Daniela Furtado: it just makes you known as that. Go to person, and your reputation can kind of speak for you. It's easier for people to understand what you do and to communicate it. I had an example, another example of another client that was doing residential, commercial.

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Daniela Furtado: and real estate. It was too much. They I advised them they wanted to do it. Anyways, I said, Okay.

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Daniela Furtado: as you wish. And when they launched within 3 months their friends and family members were telling them, I'm seeing your post on social media, but I don't really get what you do.

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Daniela Furtado: Is it? Is it commercial? Is it real estate? What is it? And that's not a good sign, that's really. If your friends and family don't even can't even

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Daniela Furtado: summarize what you do in a sentence, and advocate for you and market you. Then how are complete strangers supposed to do it?

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah, yeah, that's the biggest benefit. If you are focusing, you can get a really

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: strong story brand story vision about the impact you would like to create. You can discover this beyond layer in your own business. So, hey, you're not just creating a beautiful interior design. But no, what's what's beyond. That's what we're teaching our our members this, this magical layer, the combination of you as an individual, and this the impact you are going to create with your interior design, because it's not about this beautiful picture, this pretty images.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: there's more so. I I really love what you're what you're telling. So your best advice to for designers that want to elevate their position.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: What would it be then?

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Daniela Furtado: Choose your positioning and stay focused on that. Understand what luxury means to you, and and what capacity you want to be luxurious. Also the reason why you want to do it and stay super focused on that, and you got to do it for years. It's not like you do it for 3 months, and then it's over. No, it's it then becomes how you run your entire business.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah, compounding, compounding washer words literally. That's it's compounding. And you don't feel it right away. But if you stay in line, stay in line literally don't get out of the line.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: And then you- you see and feel the difference. Yeah.

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Daniela Furtado: I will say it's not easy. It is difficult. It takes a lot of courage, a lot of discipline.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Agree. Yeah, agree. But the the well, there is a big golden bucket in the end of the can be like that literally. Yeah. So now we've seen this transformation. So you talked about you shared the the case studies great, because it's really relatable. Let's zoom out a little bit to the bigger picture because we were talking about luxury.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: These these stories show what's really possible when you focus when you get your ideal clients, and that comes with premium fees, probably for your design office, or you become the expert expert positioning. That's that's great. So things are going way more smooth in your business than before. Hey? You don't have to invent the wheel anytime.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: But let's yeah. Let's can you break the how should designers define their own. Well, let's call it flavor of luxury.

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Daniela Furtado: Yeah, that's what I like to call it, too, flavor of luxury. So when I 1st was interested in this topic, the 1st thing I did was ask clients and prospects on sales calls.

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Daniela Furtado: hey? I heard you call yourself luxury. What does that mean? Some people were insulted.

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Daniela Furtado: Look around. Of course I'm luxury, but me, I see dozens of websites, and and I meet dozens of interior designers every week, and I will tell you, Mark, it's so different sometimes. I

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Daniela Furtado: one

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Daniela Furtado: person's definition of luxury, and how they express it through their website and their projects is very different from someone else. So I started to create these

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Daniela Furtado: 4 buckets or 4 flavors of luxury. And we use this especially in the team. So I. I have 4. There's premium, lavish.

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Daniela Furtado: aesthetic, specific, and exclusive, and I can go into each one a little bit more.

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Daniela Furtado: So. Premium is, you know.

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Daniela Furtado: a best high quality. Excellent top expert. It's a designer who's 1 of the best, if not the best, at what they do. So if you know, it's like a shoe like this is the best shoe smith in the world that made this shoe.

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Daniela Furtado: Then.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Top level, exclusive of sorry premium, is top level.

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Daniela Furtado: Say I wouldn't say it's in a hierarchy. It's just the different types or flavors of luxury that I see. I I

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Daniela Furtado: it's either all of equal value or worth. It's just the different.

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Daniela Furtado: yeah. When I ask people, what? What?

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Daniela Furtado: How do you define luxury? The definition that they give me, I'm like, okay, this, if we want to get more specific with the type of luxury, I would say, this is along the lines of premium.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah. Okay. So there's no ranking involved. It's just another definition. All right, clear? Yeah.

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Daniela Furtado: Another one is the second group, or the second flavor is lavish. This is opulence, glamour, extravagant, abundant. It's about.

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Daniela Furtado: you know, having as much as possible. We're talking about like massive spaces, huge lobbies. It's about

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Daniela Furtado: big and big and bold, right.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah.

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Daniela Furtado: Do luxury in a very small space.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: But this, not this kind. This is the kind of luxury where you want. Va-vaoo.

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Daniela Furtado: And the 3, rd I think, is very specific to an aesthetic. It's a designer who understands your specific sense of style and taste. So I would almost say this is like selective like it could be modern, it could be traditional. We have one client. She's an interior design firm, and she specializes in Victorian

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Daniela Furtado: style, like all of her homes, are Victorian, and that is a form of luxury as well, because the kind of fabrics that she needs to get, and the furniture that she sources

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Daniela Furtado: nowadays. It's everything is modern and contemporary. And so to find this kind of niche of a style can come with a price tag as well. Sometimes she needs to get things custom made for that reason, or she got she has to go to vintage stores and get them refurbished right? And a lot of people don't think vintage is or thrift is is luxury. But

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Daniela Furtado: this is a big right. This comes to the big debate.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Well, yeah, I know a company who's doing really well with refurbishing old vintage, and it's flying literally from here. Holland, in a small small village, really small village to Hollywood and Miami and Florida. Because we do have some kind of cool inside. And you think like, why, why, if you look at the price tag. It's unbelievable. So you call this flavor. You call it.

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Daniela Furtado: Call it aesthetic, or.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Septic.

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Daniela Furtado: Yeah. Cause it's very specific to an aesthetic Bohemian or Maximalist is also like that comes with a price tag, too. Why can't we call that luxury

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Daniela Furtado: it again. It depends how we we define it. Right? And then the last is I call it exclusive. In other words, it's elite. It's limited. It's private, it's award winning. It's it's very, very select group of people. Or this designer maybe only works with 5 clients. Or they offer a concierge level of personalized service. So that's

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Daniela Furtado: those are the 4 groups. Now, it is not this list is anything but exhaustive. And oftentimes people can be.

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Daniela Furtado: Maybe they can fit some of their services or some parts of their business with the premium and other fit, the exclusive. It's not it's still difficult to define. It's still a very ambiguous word. And so I really do believe that at the end of the day it's up to every design firm to really think about what luxury means for them. Take that definition, and then analyze every aspect of your business and ask yourself.

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Daniela Furtado: Am I walking the talk? Does this area of my business fit with my definition?

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Daniela Furtado: and oftentimes the website, for example, doesn't fit there. There's something that's lacking that they could do a better job in, and nothing is ever going to be perfect. But at least you're working towards it, and you're striving to do better.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah, if you talk about digital marketing, this is this is why a lot of designers get a headache. Because if you have to have the assignment and they get it. They don't have to explain so much. They can just prove what they're doing. And then they can tell. Yeah, they were at work ahead. The clients are super happy, and I can call this exclusive because it looks like that, or I have a really niche. So I could call it. Yeah, this kind of aesthetic thing, or it's really bold. So I'm 1 of these premium top designers.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: But then to communicate it upfront. So the next person who never heard of you before.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: They have to get what you're up to. If you talk about this luxury, then I yeah, I really agree on that one. What is the story? What is your luxury story, or your high end, or dare to be different, or whatever all the rent promises can be. What is the the real outcome, the bigger beyond outcome you try to achieve with your in theory, science? Yeah, they need to get it. Otherwise you not hire you.

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Daniela Furtado: Sorry I don't understand. Do I consider myself luxury, my agency.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: No, no, like the if you are a designer, and you're just doing. If you're doing your job, you're designing.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: and in the end result. You're really happy with it, and the client is very satisfied. There is where you can do all the magic, and maybe all the principles and the designer rules that are in your mind. You work with them, but the harder thing is to get those well. We call it principles and designer rules, or your almost design religion

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: to get it communicated upfront. So the next one

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: knows. Hey, this is mine. This is the designer I need to. I need to hire for the job.

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Daniela Furtado: It's challenging. I I

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Daniela Furtado: sometimes forget that I'm thinking about. I have that mentality all the time. And I if anyone asks me what makes

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Daniela Furtado: findable difference. I could tell you, or would tell me about this project. What makes this project different? I'm already thinking about that. But design firms usually aren't. Oftentimes I ask them, what makes you unique? What about your process? Your approach, your projects, and they're a little bit stumped. They don't know how to answer that. So that's I think our job is to help them through that. So we've got exercises that we do. We have like an interview style and questionnaires.

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Daniela Furtado: and it really starts with the case studies so

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Daniela Furtado: they won't know it right away. I think it's 1 of those things that you got to do it a few times, and then you start to see a pattern. So we help them turn their projects into case studies. And after about 3 to 5

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Daniela Furtado: they're starting to get it, they start to think, okay, yeah, it's true. When I I do this project after project, this is what makes us unique. What also really helps, though Mark is talking to other designers, going to industry events.

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Daniela Furtado: and talking to others, or joining a business accelerator, any sort of mastermind or group and

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Daniela Furtado: comparing, I'm not gonna lie.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: No, that's why that's why we started the beyond club, because we are also focused on our own business and our own things and try to invent the wheel, and on the other end we all have beautiful. That's that's

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: well, maybe they're probably the most surprising thing everybody need. They know they are creating interior design. They they created beautiful spaces. But everybody has this

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: this kind of higher purpose.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Why, they're doing what they're doing. Why, designing the way they are designing, and if you can touch that point.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: there you go, so authentic, so individual, so exclusive. If you can translate that to the

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: billboards on the highway, and everybody all the visibility you can get.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Then you're ready to go. That's that's that's yeah. Almost always the case. If you know who you are as designer, what you want to achieve. You connect that with your projects. So that's, I think, exactly. You're telling us, with the, with your storytelling like case studies

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: and not only showing beautiful pictures, you will attract and connect with people because you can. You can. You can reach many people on your website. But are they touched?

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: That's another thing.

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Daniela Furtado: Yeah, it takes time you got to learn. You got to get into the practice of talking about your projects, writing about them creating videos. That's 1 way. And then speaking to other designers, because that's what your target customers are doing. They're not just going to you. They're speaking to other design firms. And they're comparing and contrasting and see who gets them and and who they resonate with. And so.

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Daniela Furtado: yeah, it helps to know who else is out there, and how they run their businesses, so that you know what makes you different.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah. And you feel really, really conscious about it, very conscious, confident.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: if you do know that it's much easier to start every conversation. Yeah. So what's what's the well, if we're looking at social media in luxury marketing, that's an well, you are there on social media. Everybody's posting. So what can you say about yeah, luxury, marketing and social media? This combination.

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Daniela Furtado: I think a must for luxury marketing, whether it's social media or the website doesn't matter which platform you're using to to market yourself.

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Daniela Furtado: High quality photos are a must professionally taking photos are a must and if you can, if the project is worth it, take going a step further and taking videos as well. This is an absolute must.

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Daniela Furtado: yeah, there's.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Non non negotiable. I I can hear you. You had a beautiful sign. It's like, Okay, this is not negotiable for you to work with people. This is the 1st thing you're going to ask from them. Okay, if you like. Really like this pricing, you want to showcase it in your portfolio, beautiful pictures, and well, preferably video even. It's even better.

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Daniela Furtado: It. It's pretty. That's

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Daniela Furtado: that's a lot of it. Like if you don't have photos, it's hard to tell stories. It's hard to create blog posts. It's hard to pitch to press. It's hard to get awards. It's hard to do anything on social media without those photos. Your projects are the epicenter of your entire sales and marketing people, you know, as a service you're a service based business as an interior design firm, and us as well as a marketing agency. People can't

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Daniela Furtado: touch what you do. They can't pick it up. Try it on, smell it, wear it for a few days. Come back and give it to you. It takes a lot of trust for them to hire you, because you have this intangible service, and so the next best thing they have, if they cannot speak to a previous client. The next best thing they have are seeing projects.

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Daniela Furtado: That's why referrals are such a strong source or the predominant source in this business in this industry, because their friend and family member

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Daniela Furtado: hired you, and they can go to their home like a showroom and see the work that you did and hear about their experience. So if you want to replicate that, you know the kind of marketing and sales that your previous clients are doing. If you want to replicate that, you got to take photos and tell the stories on your website so other people can feel like, you know

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Daniela Furtado: they understand your projects, and they understand the way you work before they even meet you.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: yeah, wonderful. Yeah. And so, how? How? But then, how do you balance this visibility with exclusivity? Because it might feel that you are really pushy, or kind of cheap, or how how do you see that? Because that's always the kind of

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: I don't know.

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Daniela Furtado: I. So I think this is a common misunderstanding or misconception that because you want to market yourself as exclusive, we're not gonna talk about our work at all.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: I'm gonna.

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Daniela Furtado: Out there. But that's, I think, a misconception to be exclusive means that not everyone can work with you. But that doesn't mean that you're silent.

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Daniela Furtado: Some very, very, very few businesses can get away with this. I think you've got to really earn it like, let's take beyonce as an example beyonce nowadays. She doesn't follow anyone on social media. She doesn't really post anything. She doesn't do press tours like she used to, but she's earned her way

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Daniela Furtado: to get to that position like she was with Destiny's child for so long, and she was doing all the press tours, and so she's in a place in her career where she can do that. But when you're just starting off in your 1st like 5, maybe even 10 years, usually you can't afford to do that. So you can. I think exclusivity is about creating desire and not being available to work with everyone. But that doesn't mean that you don't talk about what you do. You don't market yourself.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Sounds like a great recipe. Yeah, very clear. Yeah, very clear. Yeah.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah. So what? What? Another question, what

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: principles are non-negotiable in lux-free marketing.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: What kind of principles do you need to have as a designer that you really can say like, No, I'm not going to do that, or

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: yes, I'm only going to do that. What? What are?

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah. How? How well firm can you be? How clear can you be with your clients?

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Daniela Furtado: I think quality and or trust are the principles and those cannot be negotiated.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Quality and trust.

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Daniela Furtado: I think. So. Yeah, like, when you're a luxury firm, you're you're expensive.

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Daniela Furtado: You're not accessible and not everyone can afford to work with you, and it's a big risk to hire you. So you've really got to show that you're worth it.

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Daniela Furtado: So that plays out in a few different ways. Everything that you put out should be of quality. Now you've got to balance this with perfectionism.

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Daniela Furtado: High quality and professionally taken. Your case studies your website should be well put together. In s, if you're doing SEO, for example, a big part of SEO means that you need to get reviews, and you need to get something called backlinks. You don't want to do. You? Don't be cheap about that. Right? You want to get real testimonials. And if you get backlinks, you probably want them to be like press features or podcast features.

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Daniela Furtado: so it's got to be done. Well, you don't want to just write fluffy blog posts or fluffy social media posts. You want to be intentional and and thoughtful about it. So that's.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Can you? Can you fake it a little bit if you're not there yet as a designer.

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Daniela Furtado: Hmm! Can you fake it

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Daniela Furtado: if you don't know like, if you've never designed a cafe and you're gonna write blog posts about it.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Properly.

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Daniela Furtado: Try, but people will sniff it like you'll probably won't get. You'll get the bottom of the barrel type of increase reaching out to you you attract what you put out right. If you're not really walking the talk, then imagine the kind of people that are going to reach out to you.

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Daniela Furtado: Now, that is a very good point. Right? If you want to become the go to in something. If you want to do big luxury projects, or you want to do very premium projects. But you haven't done it yet. How do you? How do you get there?

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Daniela Furtado: That's like the chicken and the egg. I do think

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Daniela Furtado: you're building relationships. People have to trust you

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Daniela Furtado: and know that you haven't done before. And they trust that okay, this person has enough transferable skills where I trust that they're. I'm going to take a leap of faith, and I'm going to do it with them, or I'm going to let them do it so it could be that it's like, really, some key relationships will help you get there, or you can start small and then work your way up what I said earlier about cycling projects. Right? You start with a room and you do a few of those. Then eventually someone will let you do a whole floor.

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Daniela Furtado: and then you. Now you're doing all floors, and then eventually someone will help. You will let you do a whole house, and by the time you do that you cycle out the other projects from the very beginning. So.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: You're just telling everybody I'm doing the whole house, or I don't do it.

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Daniela Furtado: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But you have to be okay with taking steps. It's it's not gonna happen overnight. And I would say, that's a really, that's another key to luxury marketing, is it? Accepting that? It's you're not selling Tacos and T-shirts. You're not gonna get 200 customers a day?

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Daniela Furtado: It's just that's not the line of business that you're in. It's gonna take time for you to get those high quality leads. And when they do come knocking on your door. Not everyone is going to give you $500,000 or euros in your case

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Daniela Furtado: from the get go like you're gonna have to earn that trust. You're gonna still have to build that relationship. Digital marketing does not replace relationship building in the sales process. It doesn't replace that. And so some people are kind of are quick to say that digital marketing doesn't work because the person wasn't ready to sign a contract after 2 calls with you. That's not all. So that's something that people have to accept, and that maybe you

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Daniela Furtado: cause what you're going after is like the 1%, you know, not everyone has those budgets. If you're working your way towards it, maybe having a smaller service like a design day or vip consultation. That's price premiumly. But it's a smaller scope of work would be a good stepping stone until you get those big projects.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah. Great that the reason I was asking, can you fake it when I really started out on 9 m² under my bunk bed with a €5 bicycle from a junkie. I, I was starting out with that business and I had a i i saw a beautiful website. I almost copied it like I. This is what I

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: would like. I was talking about my vision on interior design, and had to do something with beyond. So the whole story. When you look back it's so obvious. But that time I had no clue.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: I did that. But I I photoshopped a truck. There was a white truck online and it I'm talking about 2,008. I photoshopped the truck with my branding logo on it. And the 1st question. I got a premium client almost in my street.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: asking me to do the whole renovation of his apartment. He he was like, oh, you're just starting out, here's your

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: I was well, I felt so lucky. I just he just trusted me on that. I feel like he can do it. It was almost my 1st party, and it was a big one, a premium one I was. I can do it. But he asked me very quickly the question in the 1st conversation. That truck is that really yours from your company? I was like, no, no, I will be really honest with you. I just photoshopped the truck with my logo.

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Daniela Furtado: Yeah.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: He he loved loved about it. But God, he really loved it. He was like, I like this attitude.

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Daniela Furtado: Yes.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah, this was a kind of fake it till you make it. But I I don't think it's only because of the threat on my website. But there was something like.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Hmm, that's how I can show them that we are real good running business, although it was just starting out. And that's, I think, when you to make it really practical, I think when you share the vision, you know who you are as a designer, you could talk a lot about design, what you want to create the impact you want to create. So if you have those stories, I think you can

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: have a really, really strong start, even when you're starting to talk about the designs and the impact you want to create because people will love that. And they think, hey? This belief.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: this idea of interior design, this outcome I like that. Let's give him or her the opportunity.

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Daniela Furtado: Going to be some people that will appreciate that for sure. That reminds me, your story reminds me of when I was also starting out and trying to build my own portfolio. So I'm a big advocate. I'm a big believer in putting your face on your website.

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Daniela Furtado: I just think there are so many fake businesses and fake websites out there, or scammers.

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Daniela Furtado: and it's very easy to use stock images or AI now is, you know, huge. You can use AI generated images, and that when someone puts an image of themselves of their own face on the homepage somewhere

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Daniela Furtado: that takes a lot of pride, right? It. It's like I'm proud of my work, and I'm not afraid to put my name on it. So that speaks volumes. So that's what I had done.

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Daniela Furtado: Now it's the team photo on the home page. It's not just me. But at the time when it was just me, I put my photo on it

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Daniela Furtado: and on the homepage. And someone reached out to me. They called me actually. And he said, Yeah, I have this project. Can you do it. We went back and forth. It wasn't a good fit, because he wanted website redesign. And we don't do website redesigns. We just do the marketing.

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Daniela Furtado: but he's like he said something that stuck with me. He says, oh, it's pity, won't we won't work together because I took a look at your site, and you seem like you're just starting out. I can tell that you're young and you're just starting out. But you seem like you're a really hard worker. I just get this. And we had spoken on the phone for like 3 min. How do you know that about me?

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Oh, yeah.

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Daniela Furtado: Way you presented yourself the photo, the way that you.

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Daniela Furtado: you just put yourself out there. It's a people can feel that sometimes right. And

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Daniela Furtado: there are some people that are gonna appreciate. Other people are not. They're gonna say, do you have?

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Daniela Furtado: Do you have your stuff together or not like, I want to work with someone that you know they're they've done it before they're organized

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Daniela Furtado: their experience. So some people are.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Or they they do have a team. Or, Yeah, I I just want you because you work alone. They can have all this kind of well again. Flavors of why they want to work with you. Yeah.

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Daniela Furtado: Exactly.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah. Well, great. Well, thank you, Daniela, you have some really practical, practical, doable insights so wonderful. I like that. That's it's it's smart. It's well you can do it on a yeah, very great. Thank you for that. The last part I would like to discuss, and it's about the future of luxury marketing.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Can you foresee something? What's going to happen in the upcoming? Well, 5 years is in this

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: time a very long time. If you talk about AI 5 years before. We had no clue where we are, where we were, we should be today. So how would you see? Yeah, how is luxury marketing, evolving.

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Daniela Furtado: I think. Don't bet me on it. If I'm wrong in 5 years, don't come after me.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: I will. No, I won't.

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Daniela Furtado: I was researching.

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Daniela Furtado: I found a a branding agency in London, that is, did some research. And and they're speculating that

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Daniela Furtado: Gen. Z. Is going to really set the tone for what luxury is going forward. We're seeing a lot of Gen. Z. Care about inclusivity and accessibility, and they're applying the same concept to luxury. So they've now coined this term accessible luxury.

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Daniela Furtado: which is a paradox which is a bit like of a contradiction, because historically, luxury was not about accessibility or inclusivity at all. It was about inaccessibility and exclusivity. So this, I think, is changing, and consumer brands, like Gucci, Burberry, and Tiffany are noticing this, and we can see in some of their marketing campaigns.

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Daniela Furtado: They're trying to let go of this kind of stuffy, traditional approach, and they're adopting more of an open and accessible attitude. They're using words like diverse and inclusive in their social media. They're using things like memes to be more approachable to the Gen. Z.

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Daniela Furtado: There are. There is this trend where they're like vandalizing their own brand campaigns, so they will have posters, and then they will take graffiti and vandalize it themselves, or the staff are trained to be a very approachable, very friendly, and not stiff and reserved. And we're also seeing unexpected collaboration so

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Daniela Furtado: high end brands are now working with streetwear and creating pieces together. So this is, I think, the trend that we're seeing is that this definition of luxury is going to be kind of broken. It's going to be ripped apart, and I mean that in a positive way.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, if you you are telling me all these examples. And then I'm like, Yeah, of course. So it's it sounds really logical right now, now, the other ones like, yeah, is, is it inclusive? But I do think so. Yeah, yeah. And they want it on every.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: It's not that you are having. A

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Gen. Z. Doesn't want to have a luxury lifestyle, 24 h or something. It's like, I want it now for this moment, and then they get rid of it.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: I don't know if that's if that's the case. True, it's not like you'll always have this luxury thing. But it's like.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah.

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Daniela Furtado: Yeah, yeah, I think of an example. A family friend of ours. They're Italian. They have a restaurant, an Italian restaurant, and they're getting ready to pass it down to their son. So it's a family business, and it's been around. It's probably for 30, 40 years. And the the current owner, the father

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Daniela Furtado: He grew up

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Daniela Furtado: for so long. They attracted customers because of value, like you would get big portions. For a reason price, and that's what people liked. They liked the the price to quality or quantity ratio

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Daniela Furtado: and his son. I remember we saw him on on New Year's. They came over.

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Daniela Furtado: he was saying, people don't care about that anymore. They want to go to a place because the food is very high. Quality or the experience is really cool, and they can talk about it afterwards.

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Daniela Furtado: They're willing to pay triple the price for that, like people don't care about affordability, or the young generation is not caring so much about affordability, or the, you know, price to quantity ratio like like our parents did.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: They need to serve less spaghetti, and they can triple the price.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: That's a very good business model. Yeah.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: that's amazing what this is. This is what literally means now, and exclusivity, or lavish, or whatever you like to call it's

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: well, I think in a few years we can laugh about it like, what what did we do there? We were paying triple amount, and we had the years before we got way more for the same amount. Yeah, it's yeah.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Well, it's the same with hamburgers. You can eat a hamburger

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: everywhere in the world but it. The price will be from €1 up to

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: well, I know there are burgers from $300, or even 3,000. There was a restaurant.

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Daniela Furtado: Exactly exactly it luxury. This this word is.

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Daniela Furtado: is very difficult to define, because access to money is is more accessible than ever before. We don't have just rich and poor. Most of us are in between.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Well, that's I think that's another discussion. Maybe we have to do the second part. But well, yeah, well, a lot of yes, every there was a lot of a lot available. Yeah, there's so much available right now. Yeah.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah. Well, Daniela, thank you for pulling back the curtain on luxury marketing today and sharing such a valuable and actionable insights with our community today.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Thank you very much.

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Daniela Furtado: I really appreciate. This was a really fun conversation. I'm glad that we got to go deep into it.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Well, wonderful, so well for the listeners. If you want to learn more about Daniel Effortado and get access to exclusive resources from from this episode, you'll find everything in the special link in the podcast description. Thank you for tuning in to the beyond the territory podcast and see you next time, and of course, don't forget to hit the subscribe button. Bye-bye. Thank you very much.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: All right.

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Daniela Furtado: Manila.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Amazing.

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Daniela Furtado: Thank you so much.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: I take this as a compliment. Amazing. That's what I like to hear. Yeah, you loved it.

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Daniela Furtado: It was really good. Yeah, it was very thorough. I thought I had my imessage on mute, and it went off 2 times. Is that.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: I didn't hear it.

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Daniela Furtado: Oh, okay. Fantastic. Good. Good.

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Daniela Furtado: Okay. Good.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: So

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: sometimes we had it that I was talking, and then you had a kind of one. Well, a little moment that your voice came in later on. I don't know what why that happened. It was not in beginning, but later on

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: I don't know. Normally we just can talk at the same time, and then maybe the mic was acting differently. But

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: maybe the the recording of zoom will fix that because they take the speaker and the we have the gallery view recording. So, yeah.

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Daniela Furtado: Right.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yep.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: but well, thank you very much. You were well prepared, that's what I saw, but it was amazing to see you, because you were. You were looking a little bit at your notes sometimes, and but I didn't care, because it was. It was really relevant at the moment, and when I had one extra question or something like that. You? Then you went straight, direct into the depth.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: and then you had this free talking like, Okay, now, now, this is non negotiable. That moment you are really yeah, that was your. You were on fire at that moment, they say, Well, now, this is non negotiable. I saw it in your eyes and your passion and the energy. I I added the 1st meeting. Yeah, so that that time you were all you were really relaxed. So there was a halfway somewhere there.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah. But thank you. Yeah, what's I think they will really appreciate this episode.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Because yeah, I I said it many times. It's really practical. People can literally hear you. They can have their own opinion about it and take action tomorrow.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: and well, when you don't,

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: when they cannot manage it or they need help, they they know where to find you. So maybe

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: I will put the yeah.

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Daniela Furtado: Yeah, yeah, if that's good, whatever comes, comes.

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Daniela Furtado: can you share like the any feedback or stats afterwards? Once it's published? Do people give you feedback, or or.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Not not many anymore. In the beginning we had a this landing page, and some people were commenting every time, but most of the time it was kind of person like, yeah, okay, I know you're a big fan. But

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: hmm, yeah. But we do see a statue on a longer period, and the most of the time. It's the postcards that are really practical, although we like to go actually way more beyond. But now this is a well. This is perfectly in this matter, because they all talk about branding having the story straight. So it connects really well with their main

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: well, problems or challenges at the moment. If you are a premium designer right now, and you cannot break the ceiling.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: It's probably this problem.

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Daniela Furtado: Yeah.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: We have a lot of good clients, premium clients. They get paid well or just healthy, but then they are like, What's next? Where are the real

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: have people that do understand me. So yeah, I think. And that's where you your your expertise comes in. Yeah, of course I will. well, I will follow you, and probably we have for the long term we have some ideas about expanding services

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: to the in the Beyond the Terrorism Club, and that can be from ambassadors or Podcast guests

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: that we do see that there are international designers that are like okay the 1st thing they need to do is now they have passed their exam at the, at our course. They need to fix their website, and we are not going to do it. I can imagine if I hear your story connects really well with what we are teaching or sharing. I do believe you're yeah, at 1st focusing and then really, case studies and telling the world wide, the beyond.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: That's the way to go. So

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Daniela Furtado: The group program, right?

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah, we have silk, marble and gold. There are 3. It's really a mastermind sessions. If you look at work with us, think is that or programs.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah.

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Daniela Furtado: And do you teach people how to generate leads? Or it's more operations.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: No more operations actually to design your the life and the business.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: So it's more like, how do you design your business in such a way that it's on your terms that you can have the clients you want. And then the really practical part of website and all the stuff that's not included. Because we are not this kind of designers. We are outsourcing

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: on that one. So what we don't do, we don't teach.

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Daniela Furtado: Sure sure oh, fair enough.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: We outsource, we train to outsource that. Yeah, yeah, I'm not being. I'm not going on the expert chair talking about website, optimization.

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Daniela Furtado: Well, if you ever want a guest speaker to come in, I would be happy to take even one of the case studies and break it down and show the different like kind of what I talked about with Sansa interiors. I could show I did that at the Interior Design show here in Toronto a couple of years ago, where I broke.

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Daniela Furtado: what did we do? What were the different phases? And I? And so in theory, someone could do it themselves. I could give the whole recipe.

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Daniela Furtado: So if you, if you ever want to, guest Speaker.

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Daniela Furtado: I'm all I'm all I would love. I'm open to it.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah, I would keep it. Yeah, keep it in mind.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah, maybe that's more.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: an insight for the community. Really, they're paying community members to offer this kind of service. I think it's that's wonderful. You have more in depth.

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Daniela Furtado: Hmm.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah.

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Daniela Furtado: Yeah.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: That's I think that's way. Better to do that. Then you have. Possibly you have. You can have quality leads if they really want to work with you, or that's I think that's better. Otherwise it's too much value. Well, that doesn't exist in marketing. You have to give your best

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: have for free, actually. But this is too much from, I think, for our focus. This is too much focused on this digital marketing.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: And we don't want to be the digital marketing company to hey? If they elevate, elevate your business or grow your business, we don't. It doesn't mean we are focusing on your digital marketing. We want to get the story straight. Who you are, how you want to design your business, hey? Your terms. And if you know that your principles, your religion. You know how to take on a client, you're ready to communicate it upfront, and that's where other partners come in. Yeah.

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Daniela Furtado: Yeah, understand who you are is the foundation. And then.

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Daniela Furtado: and are they the the. So you haven't.

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Daniela Furtado: There are 3 groups. So there's 1. The insider community, you said, would be like the gold or the marble.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah, gold is a 1 on one coaching mentorship me and Sven are literally in the business. That's the most exclusive one. Then we have marble that's in the most

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: well, the biggest video program combined with group coaching.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: So that's that's the the middle thing. And silk is the kind of starting point at the moment with a Dutch streaming, but it works really well because they can grow from getting premium clients to working with premium clients and then

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: level up.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah. But getting clients is not really. We try to avoid that in the last few weeks, actually to focus on premium like, Hey, you already have a business you have, you have. You can. You can invest in training or mentorships.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: So we are shifting the Po, the focus on luxury or premium as you could. Yeah, we call a premium. Yeah.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: all the startups. They can go to another community or training program.

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Daniela Furtado: I see. Okay. So you don't even find that the the ones that more established they they want to do marketing because I find like with. Sometimes I get clients that they're close. There may be 10 years of away from retirement, and they're thinking about. I got to sell this and it. And to sell this business

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Daniela Furtado: I got to market better, or

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Daniela Furtado: they want to expand like they have a good customer base. But they wanna expand outside of their network or not rely so much on referrals, even though they're established.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah, yeah. Well, this this can be the case. Why? Why they don't have, why, they don't reach the next level. But in most of the cases. It's like, okay, yeah, they. They do have all these referrals, but they are afraid to ask more that most of the time is that that I don't want to raise my fee. Otherwise I don't know what happens.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: that's a lot of yeah, I do. I've met really premium designers that are on the covers of magazines in Holland, and they have fees. Well

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: to cry. And I said, How can you? How? What is this business? And they say I earn all the money on the back end with the creation.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: the realization part, all the fees, all the provisions, all the everything they get from the suppliers, the margins.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: It's a business model, but, in fact, with the beyond club I don't believe that's the way to go. If you talk about transparency, and literally the

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: the how do you call it? Blockchain technology.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: which is coming with all the transparency from hey? This is the original creator. Then it goes to that. Then it goes to that.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: I think if you look at it that way, it's very fair to get paid for your expertise because you are. You're the designer. You're the expert, and then you hand it over to

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: another person in your team or another company to take the next step. So I don't want to earn a lot on the back end. I want to earn

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: where I'm good at.

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Daniela Furtado: Yeah, yeah.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: That's what we are. That's what we're doing. We have a small small

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: amount of money is coming in from back end, but we actually only from the yeah kind of carpenter guy, and that's it. All the shopping, all the brands, all the furniture. We skip that part because it's for us way. Better to have 6 high end clients a year, and get paid really well for your design.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: then doing all the management and everything, and then well, collecting all these euros on the back end. It's I don't think it's honest

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: and transparent this time, so I think it's old fashioned to do business like that.

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Daniela Furtado: And it it limits. Who you work with sometimes, too right?

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Definitely and what you advise, because if you know I have, you have great margins on the couch in a brand. You always

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: advise that that couch because you're like, oh, I do hope they will go for this because I have 30%. If they if they buy a couch from 10 KI do have 3 K. At least. That's not the best design, but that's that's another story. But that's really our religion, and we're teaching every designer to raise the fee. So within 3, 4 months they doubled their income just on fee easily when they start working with us.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: or just ask the same amount of money for one floor

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: what they did 3 3 months before for the whole house.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Something like

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: like that. Yeah, this is really measurable with the results, and well, all the great lifestyle and all the peace that comes in and the relaxed and the clarity of maybe I need to outsource that to stop doing that, that's the biggest benefit, probably.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Well, in terms of mindfulness or mindset.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah. So I want people to be happy to run a beautiful business. Do what you love to do and the rest.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah, do what you do best hire the rest. This this kind of this thing.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah.

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Daniela Furtado: Good morning!

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Yeah.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Well, then, yeah, I have to go. But thanks again, yeah, I'm really glad that you. Well, did you reach out to us. Yeah, you reach out to us. Yeah, with the article. Yeah, really glad you did.

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Daniela Furtado: I'm glad. Thank you for for taking me up on it and if you need anything, let me know. I'll look out for your email. If you and I'll provide whatever I can. And when it comes out I'll share it on our email, newsletter and social media get the word out.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Great. Yeah. Wonderful. The 1st of February.

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Daniela Furtado: Okay.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Is-is, there publishing.

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Daniela Furtado: Perfect.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: So I will. Keep you notes. Yeah.

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Daniela Furtado: Thank you very much.

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Daniela Furtado: Have a good one.

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Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Enjoy.