Her clients were driving her NUTS. 😂

She didn't hate them, exactly.

But she was starting to hate the work.

Too many after-hours texts.
Requests that were well outside what she'd agreed to do.
Extra revisions and scope creep.
Clients making purchases on their own... then pulling her back in when things got complicated. 😩
And the worst: work she wasn't getting paid for.

She had plenty of clients. This obviously wasn't a Nail Your Niche problem.

She was also very good at converting leads into signed contracts.

So on the surface, it didn't look like a Contact to Contract problem either.

But that's exactly what I prescribed.

Because when we dug into what was going wrong during her projects, we found that a surprising amount of it could be addressed before the project even started.

It turned out that when clients came to her eager to get moving, too often she let their urgency rush the onboarding process. As a result, expectations that were perfectly clear in her head never made it onto paper, which in turn meant boundaries weren't getting established until someone crossed them.

And that's way too late. 😬

From her intake form to her contract, the client-prep process simply wasn't doing its job: making it clear how the designer-client relationship was supposed to work. In other words:

She had downstream client problems caused in large part by controllable things happening upstream.

Could a better onboarding process turn every difficult human into a dream client? God, no. 😂

But the time between “Hi, I'd love to work with you” and “Where do I sign?” teaches a client a heck of a lot about what it's going to be like to work with you. It should make it crystal clear:

Who's leading?
What's included?
What's not?
What happens when something changes?
Where are the boundaries?
What will you say yes to?
And what happens when you say no?

That's why Contact to Contract isn't actually about getting more clients to sign.

It's about making sure they are READY to sign so you set up a better project before the project even starts.

On Thursday, I'll show you some of the specific things we changed and why, after we finished overhauling her process and contract, she told me she finally felt confident about what she was sending clients. 💪

If your leads are already good but your projects keep making you want to flee the country, stick with me. 😆 Thursday, I'll show you what we changed.

💛 Rebecca

✨ JOIN ME FOR ✨

Next Contact to Contract Client Onboarding Bootcamp: October 5.

And I'll see you at KBIS in Vegas!

Well, hello there — have we met?

I’m Rebecca West. I help residential interior designers feel seriously confident about their marketing, sales, and client onboarding.

Everything I teach comes from running my firm, Seriously Happy Homes, for 17 years. Between 2007 and 2023, my team and I helped over 2,000 clients transform their small, tired houses into happy homes. 💛 Our work, and my book Happy Starts at Home, was featured on TV’s New Day, in The Wall Street Journal, Live Happy Magazine, Success Magazine, & beyond!

Then, in 2023, I closed my design studio and moved to Paris, and, a couple of years later, to the south of France. ( 🤩 !! )

As a coach, consultant, and gal-who's-been-there, I'm here to help the next generation of creative, hardworking, detail-oriented interior designers get found, get great clients, and get paid like a pro!

Let’s make it happen for you!

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