Ep 5: What Copywriter Kamala Wishes Interior Designers Knew About Website Messaging

In this episode of Stuff Interior Designers Need to Know I sit down with Kamala Nair, CEO of  Kamala Nair, Inc, a copywriting firm dedicated to Interior Designers,  to help us understand when - and how - to work with a professional copywriter. Having worked for Elle Decor Magazine as a content writer, and West Elm as a copy writer, she's got behind-the-scenes knowledge on what it takes to reach the luxury client and tell the unique story of your designs.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone who's trying to level up the copy for their website. Whether you're going to hire a pro, or are bootstrapping the copy on your own, there is something for you in this episode!

Find Kamala at Kamala Nair, Inc., or go be friends with her on Instagram at @kamalanair!

---

Looking for my Interior Design Business Coaching & Courses? 💪
👉 seriouslyhappy.com

Wanna be Interior Design & Expat Insta-Friends?! 😊
👉 @beseriouslyhappy

Follow my Moving-To-France, Living-In-Paris Expat Adventures 🇫🇷
👉 Bonjhola podcast

And here's where to find my Book on Interior Design Psychology 📚
👉 Happy Starts at Home

Transcript

0:07

Welcome to stuff. Interior designers need to know the podcast where the title says it all. If you're a residential interior designer and interior design business owner, this is the place to find out the stuff you need to know to succeed in business and create a business that makes you seriously happy. Today, we're talking to a copywriter, you know, the kind of person who puts the words around the marketing messages you're supposed to send out to get people to come hire you. If you're like me, you find it a lot easier to write words for others and to celebrate their accomplishments then write your own copy, which means you have a decision to make, are you going to slug through and write your own copy? Or are you going to hire the kind of person who does this for a living? There's no right answer, but I thought it might help for us to talk to a copywriter who's specifically serves the interior design industry to get her take on what we should know about copywriting as interior designers. I was particularly excited to have this lady on because she has worked as a content writer for Elle decor magazine and as a copywriter for west Elm. As well as for all of our individual interior design clients over the years. That means she has a broad sense of what we need to know as interior designers, when it comes to copywriting. So let's dive right into this conversation with our copywriting colleague Kamala Nire. Welcome to the show, Kamala. I'm so excited you're here today. Thank you, Rebecca. I'm so happy to be here. For the people listening who don't know who you are, you are a copywriter for interior designers specifically. Do I have that right? Exactly. I write website copy and blogs and email marketing specifically for interior designers. So when it comes to copywriting, you're trying to represent the brand of the person you're speaking for. How do you begin with a client trying to find their voice that you're going to write in? Yeah, that's a great question. I actually liken that process to the same process that interior designers use to try to figure out the style and personality of their clients when they're creating interior designs for them. The process is actually very similar. There's like a discovery process, which, um, for me entails a questionnaire. And that's really a deep dive into the designer's brand, their goals, their style, their vision. And then we'll come together and dive even deeper into those questions so that I can gain that really in depth understanding of who they are, what they're looking for, what their brand is all about. And in the process of those conversations, I also get that opportunity to hear how they speak, hear the nuances of their language, and put those two things together. And so that's sort of, in a nutshell, how I would start putting together that brand voice, because it's really important that it sounds authentic and it sounds like you. Absolutely. Now, the reason I was really excited to have you on the show is because I personally feel a lot of frustration with the fact that when I go look at a lot of interior designer websites, I can't distinguish one from another. And I mean, this all comes back to what is our niche? What do we do? Who do we do it for? And people tend to stay in this really generic, bland place for lots of reasons. Either they haven't figured out their niche or they're just too, uh, too afraid to really embrace it. So how often do you work with people? Where they're coming to you with something that isn't fully developed yet. Like you need to draw out stuff that is less generic. How does that play into your process? You know, pretty much every client comes to me in that place. I'd say it's very rare that someone comes to me and says, I've got it all figured out. Here's my niche. Here's my message. I just need you to write it. A big part of the work that we do together is figuring that out together. And I totally agree. Like one of my big motivations for wanting to niche into this industry, aside from the fact that I just loved it. Was that I had that same experience where I was looking at websites of interior designers And the work was so stunning and individual But the words that accompanied that work were so generic. They all sounded exactly the same and they were so riddled with cliches And in such a competitive industry where there are so many designers with amazing work Words really have power to give you that edge over all the other designers with beautiful portfolios. So, a big part of that discovery work and that early work we do together before I even put a single word on paper is to figure out what is it that makes you different, what is it that makes you stand out, and I guarantee you every designer has something, even if they don't believe that they do. We always figure out what it is. And then it's also about, you know, those quote unquote generic words like modern or classic or timeless. It's not that there's something wrong with those words per se, but it's about trying to understand specifically what it is about your designs that is important. is modern. Like why is your work modern? Like let's dive into the specifics. And once you start diving into those specifics, like talking through stories of successful client projects or something that you recently did for a client that you felt was modern. Once you start diving into those specifics, that's when you start unlocking. What actually makes you different and you can start nailing that crystal clear messaging and really Defining what we're talking about because one designer might mean something very different by the words Quality and luxury as compared to another designer But how is the client supposed to know that if we don't find a way to articulate it? Yes So I'm curious, where does SEO fall into your line of work? Is it part of it? Is that a different provider? How does that play? So there are people who specifically focus on SEO and they'll do things like figuring out the right keywords. And there are some copywriters who focus on SEO. I focus much more on higher level strategy and getting the brand messaging right. If you do work with an SEO specialist and you come to me with keywords, that is something that I would incorporate and fold into the work that we're doing together. Cause of course you want to be searchable. I also do help with SEO in terms of blog writing because blogs are really an amazing resource for not only positioning yourself as a thought leader or positioning yourself as an expert, but also just getting those views on your pages and on your website. Speaking of different pages and other providers, there's also the design of the website itself. So you could have a one page scrolling website, you could have a 50 page website. How does it work in terms of your role and the website designer's role? Like who, who should be at the table first? A hundred percent the copywriter should come first. I know that sounds like I'm biased, but I've spoken with many designers who completely agree with me, and they always say that they'll tell their clients to find a copywriter first. Because The messaging is really what's going to dictate the structure and the design. If someone comes to me and says, I have a fully designed website. I just need you to fill in, you know, the, the filler copy that the designer put in, that's immediately putting yourself at a disadvantage and limiting what you can do in terms of personality, in terms of voice, in terms of, you know, Outlining your process, the steps that a client has to take to work with you. There are so many pieces of content that are important to include and the hierarchy of it is really going to depend on your specific brand and your message. So it's very important that that comes first. I'm always happy to work with designers. My favorite. Collaboration is like once the copy is done and the designer starts their work. I love going back and forth and just making sure that everything is implemented well, and having that sense of creative, creative collaboration between the two. The way you describe that reminds me of how, for those of us who have done decluttering for clients, we'll go to their house and they'll be like, what cool storage system should I buy for all my stuff? And the first question is always, well, wait, what stuff are we trying to store. So in this case, we need to know what words and what message we're trying to put in beautiful containers before we choose the beautiful container, which is the website itself. Totally. Do you ask for anything aesthetic as part of that preliminary work? Like if people have Pinterest boards or colors or logo work already done, is that part of the conversation too? Absolutely. I always ask for those materials. I love to see sample design presentations and mood boards because that's also what helps me get that sense of what is this designer's style? What are they about? It's not just about how they describe it to me. It's about the visuals because that's where they shine and that's where they're, Creativity is really at its best. So yeah, I do like to get the visuals as well as the, you know, spoken messaging. One of the things that I'm very hyper excited about is making sure that when we sign a client, that that client. Knows what to expect when they're going to work with us. Working with me could be very different from working with my colleague. Even if we ended up with the exact same room at the end, the process of working together, the number of meetings we're having, how long it takes to get from A to Z. How do you walk that balance between making sure that the client is really well informed, but not overwhelming a client with information? That's a great question. So, That's actually one struggle that I often have with interior designers, because obviously designers are very visual, they're very artistic, and they often want as few words as possible on a page, so sometimes they'll say to me, like, I kind of want to leave the process a mystery, like, you know, I don't see Kelly Wurstler or Nate Berkus talking about their process on their website. But unless you're a worldwide international name that doesn't need words to sell because they already have done all these other brand building initiatives to get to where they are. You really do need those words and you really do need that clarification because the number one reason why your website is not converting is because it's not clear how to work with you. Someone who's shopping around for an interior designer. Might be looking at a bunch of different sites. They might land on yours and they might click through your portfolio and say, Oh, this designer's work is beautiful. And then if you have a services page, they'll click to it. And then they might just be like, huh? I'm not. totally clear on what this designer actually offers. I'm not clear on what the first step is. You know, there's no button asking me to click to contact them. There's just an email address. I'm not really sure what to even email to them. And once those questions start going around in your head, you're just going to click away. The most likely next step is you're going to be like, I can't deal with this right now. I'll come back to it. And if you're lucky, they'll bookmark your page, but more likely what's going to happen is they'll just click away and never come back. And you've lost that person who actually did love your style and did love your work. So that's scenario A. Scenario B is that this interested party lands on your site. And click on your services page. And they say, okay, this is exactly what this designer offers. They do full service interior design. Um, this is what full service means. This is what I'm going to get with that in order to access the service. I need to fill out this questionnaire on their website. I need to answer these specific questions. And in 48 hours, someone from their team will get back to me to set up a call. Having those steps. outlined makes that decision making process so much smoother and easier, and you're so much more likely to get that person to book that call. In terms of how to do it without being overwhelming, one of the things that I really like to talk about is that copy needs to be scannable. I'll often see these big, long paragraphs, all in the same font, all in the same size. You can't just have this huge chunk of text. When I say it needs to be scannable, you should really just be able to look at the headlines and scan down a page and. Fully understand what's going on just by looking at the headlines, then you'll have your subheadings, which go into a little bit more detail. That's how you make it not overwhelming. And so the copywriter is playing a hand in the actual design because obviously those headlines and subtitles are part of what will be then formatted to catch the eye when the website designer gets their hands on it. Yes, exactly. So what is it that drives you most crazy when it comes to copywriting for interior designers? What do you really wish interior designers knew? I think what drives me most crazy is I'm going to say two things. I hope that's okay. So the first thing is just wasting precious real estate. The most precious real estate on your website is above the fold on your home page. And by above the fold, I mean, when you first land on a website before you scroll the first thing that you see. And the reason that that's so important is because You really only have 15 seconds to capture your reader's attention. 15 is actually generous. It's probably, it's probably closer to five to 10. If somebody lands on your site and they're not captured in that few seconds, they're going to click away. So that's the most important part of your website. And I very often just see an image. Which even if it's really beautiful, it doesn't give that reader something to latch onto. They need something to dig their fingers into and grab a hold of to pull them to want to scroll through the rest of the site. So you need some kind of words there. It doesn't have to be huge, but you need a headline. You need a hook. And so that's a big thing. And then the second thing is when people do have words, but they waste them. Sometimes it'll be like, welcome to XY interiors. You know, just like, don't welcome me with the words welcome. Welcome me with an enticing hook that tells me something about who you are and what you do. So that's probably my number one pet peeve. The second one is portfolios that don't have any storytelling, because that's such a huge missed opportunity. It's that same idea where you need to give someone something to hook their fingers into. Just looking at a bunch of beautiful images without any context, it's a disorienting experience. Even if your work is stunning and beautiful and you've invested in expensive, amazing photography. you're wasting that investment if you're not supporting that beautiful photography with words and storytelling. Plus, you're leaving so much to the assumptions of the person looking at it. They're filling in information, because we haven't provided it, about the How long it took to get to that result, or how much that result cost, or if those materials were hard to source and very unique, or they're very easy to source, very easy to clean. All of those things may be really critical details that the client is looking for from their designer, but without providing that storytelling like you're describing, you're leaving the conversation in their head instead of guiding the conversation that you want to have with them. Thank you. Yes, exactly. And you're, you're missing those opportunities to share those really special things that you do. Let's say you are an eco friendly designer and you have a focus on sustainability, someone who's just looking at that beautiful dining table and an image, they're not going to know that it's made of reclaimed wood. They might just think, oh, that looks like a crate and barrel table. And so you're losing that opportunity to share that message and really connect with your ideal client on what they care about. Speaking of things clients care about, what's your opinion on sharing pricing on a website? So I know that's controversial and I think that people need to do what's comfortable for them. So I would never push someone to do it if they're really uncomfortable or they feel that it's not authentic to their brand or who they are. That said, my opinion is that you should share pricing. It sort of goes back to what we were saying about being clear about your process and about your steps. You don't have to, you know, have a full detailed breakdown of budgets, but giving some sense of what your pricing is, is just going to give a sense of security to that ideal client. It's going to make them feel comfortable reaching out to you. And then on the other hand, it's going to be a qualifier for you. So it's going to save you time. That person who just wants you to. give them an Ikea shopping list is going to immediately be like, okay, this is not the right person for me. And then that person who is actually serious and wants to invest in great design, they're going to feel confident taking that step forward with you. So much of what I'm hearing you describe is centers around building confidence. In the client that they feel confident that you can do what they need and building trust, which is such an important thing. It's the thing that we all want. Once we start working with the client. But if we don't establish that trust as early as we can. We're kind of chasing it the whole time we're designing with our clients. So many of the things you've described would elevate a client's trust in you long before they ever meet with you. Yeah, trust is important in any kind of business relationship, but I think especially in interior design, it's important because if you're designing someone's home, It's such an intimate and personal thing, like you're inviting someone to come into your home, to go through your stuff, to share these really personal, intimate stories, and expose your lifestyle. Without that trust, it's very difficult to have a productive relationship. It really is. And it's not just all the intimacy. Of like, where do you sleep and who's on what side of the bed or whatever. But it's also all of that, plus a huge chunk of money. They're spending so much money on these projects and money is a trigger within ourselves, within our relationships. And so we're managing all of that plus the emotion of money. If you don't have trust. Oh my goodness. It's just a losing battle. You mentioned earlier, the contact page, the call to action. How much do you help designers with the questions on their intake form? Oh, I do help with that. A big part of what I do with my clients is helping to understand what their goals are, who their ideal clients are and what kinds of projects they want to be attracting. And that is going to play into the kinds of questions that go in the questionnaire. Great. So you're saying if it involves words, you're there to help them with it. Yes. Yes, exactly. So if they're not, well, actually two parts to this question. So one is, how does a designer know they're ready to hire a copywriter? And this is obviously leaning a little bit into what does it cost to work with a copywriter, but also what do they need to do to prepare to have a great experience when they are ready to hire? Sure. So yeah, I'll start with how does a designer know that they're ready to work with a copywriter? I would say, if you look at your website, do you feel that it accurately captures your brand, your personality, and your talent? When you read the words on your website, do you feel, yes, this is exactly what I want to be putting out there. This is exactly what my ideal client wants to know and what they want to hear. So that's one question to ask yourself. And if the answer is yes, then maybe you don't need a copywriter. The second question is, Is your website actually getting you results? Are you getting booked calls on your calendar from your website? It's a really good exercise to take a look at your analytics on your website and get a sense of how many visitors are actually visiting my website every month. And out of those visitors, how many of them are actually making inquiries? If the number is high and you're getting lots and lots of calls, Booked calls from ideal clients on your calendar. Then again, you're probably don't need to be working with a copywriter. If you're not getting those things, like if you're looking at your number, your conversion numbers, and there's lots of people visiting your site, but only one or two are booking calls every month. Or if you're getting a lot of book calls, but they're with people who are completely unqualified and you're just spinning your wheels on all of these discovery calls that don't actually go anywhere. Those are signs that you need a copywriter. Getting your website in shape, getting your brand messaging on point is going to act as a conversion tool and you're going to start getting a lot more calls and it's also going to act as that qualifier for you so that you do start magnetizing your ideal clients instead of all of those people who want things from you that are just completely not in your wheelhouse or what you want to be doing. So those would be some considerations. I would also strongly recommend that you not invest in copywriting until you've invested in professional photography of your work. I think as much as copy is extremely important, it's a very visual industry. And if you don't have a beautiful professional portfolio, no amount of messaging is going to help you. So I would say the first investment that you make as a professional designer is in that professional photography. Um, and then what was, What was the next question? What does it cost to hire a copywriter? I'm assuming I could probably go find somebody on Fiverr for a couple hundred bucks, and I'm assuming that I could probably drop ten or twenty thousand dollars on this, but what's common? Yeah, so, yes, I mean, it's just like an interior design. It runs the gamut. You could find someone who could do this for a couple hundred bucks on Fiverr, but then you would be getting the quality that you're paying for. So I would say there's a range. There's not like a set number, but I would say, let's just take, um, a website, for example, a full website copy and a overall brand messaging strategy and portfolio storytelling and all of those things, testimonials, I would say that would range between five and 10, 000. And that's aligned with about how much we're also going to invest in the website design itself. Yes. These go hand in hand with each other. So yeah, it is a significant investment because you're, you're likely going to invest in both, like you said, a designer and a copywriter. So you could be looking at 15 to 20, 000. But the great thing about interior design is that it is a high ticket service. So it's not like you're investing 20 K to sell, you know, 2, 000 packages. You're, you're selling these huge packages, which can be hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so making that initial investment, if you do it right, enormous, it's a great investment. So before somebody's ready, what advice would you give to somebody who's still bootstrapping their own copywriting and website design? Yeah, the advice that I would give is in terms of your brand messaging, I would say be authentic. That's my number one piece of advice. Be yourself, be authentic. Don't be afraid to show off your personality. A lot of clients say to me, I really want to work with nice people. And I'm like, if you're nice and you're a copy, you're going to attract nice people. And if you want to attack, attract stuffy, pretentious people, if you're stuffy and pretentious and you're a coffee, that's probably the type of client that you're going to attract back. So, yeah, I think it's just really important to be yourself. It reminds me, when I was brand new, I was obsessed with the word professional. I was like, I just want to come across as professional. And I think I kept trying to put on, like, somebody else's clothes. Is this something that you see from a lot of emerging designers, where they think they have to be something different than they are in order to succeed? Definitely. I mean, when I'm talking to designers in our initial meetings, they'll sometimes say things like, Oh, I really want my tone to be professional and serious. But when they're speaking to me, they're playful and funny and charming and witty. And so, yeah, I think it's very difficult as business owners to, especially as creatives, cause many of us are not inherently business minded and we just want to focus on the creative side and the artistic side. And so it's very difficult to think about yourself as a brand. And yeah, so there is very often that disconnect, but I think that disconnect always shows and. It may not be immediately obvious, but there's always going to be something a little bit off about that website and about that voice and the tone if it doesn't align with Your authentic self and how you really are. I got a big wake up call. Um, it must've been about a year and a half into my business. And I had a good friend who said to me, the person that I would expect to show up at my house, if I hired you based on your website is very different from the person that I know who's sitting right in front of me. And she pointed that out to me and she's like, it would be really weird to me to have you come over. Having made some assumptions about what I'm going to get based on the website, and that was really important for me to hear. Like, yeah, it's not just that I don't need to be stuffy and pretentious and all these things in order to make sales. We've set that aside. It's also going to degrade the trust if I were to show up differently from what they're expecting. And as we said earlier, it's so important to build trust at every single step, but it is scary, Kamala, to put yourself out there. It really is, and I have complete empathy, but putting yourself out there doesn't have to mean TMI. It doesn't mean you have to like share everything. It just means being real. I often see coaches or advisors saying, you know, when you're first starting out, Just use chat GPT for your website copy back to that question of advice for someone who's not ready to invest in a professional copywriter yet. I would rather that you write your own copy and maybe it's flawed or maybe it's not perfect, but at least it's you and it's worth it. full of personality, but it feels real, please don't use chat GPT because you can immediately tell when someone has done that. Maybe the sentences will be grammatically perfect, but there's no soul. There's no life. There's no personality. There's no character. then it just sounds like everyone else. And at that point, you might as well just have a website that's just images. I would rather that you write your own copy and it's not perfect and it's full of flaws, but it shows who you are. I was actually going to ask you about chat. I'm so glad you brought it up yourself. So you've said that the biggest mistakes that you see from designers, number one, is that they aren't authentic. And that they are wasting the real estate of their website by using generic phrases. What else comes to your mind when you think about really good practices when it comes to copywriting? Yeah. So I would say the number one, if you only do one thing, it should be figuring out what that hook is. That's going to be on your homepage. That's the most important piece. And one exercise that I use with my clients to try to start figuring out what needs to go there is I ask them the question, When a client discovers blank. So fill in the blank. When a client discovers blank. About me, they have to hire me. So what is that one thing that when a client learns this about you or your process or your work, there's no question. They have to hire you. Whatever that blank is, that needs to be front and center on your homepage. This is going to put you on the spot, but do you have some examples of favorite hooks that you've gotten to help people create, or that you've seen from other designers out there? Oh, I need to like actually look back at some. Um, Hmm. Can I pull some up on my? Yeah, you bet. Okay. Let's see. Okay. So I'm going to give you a few examples. These three are very different, but I think that they convey clearly what this designer is about. So this first one is Madeline Hemingway. who's a Brooklyn based designer, and I'm going to read the headline and her sub headline. So the headline says, curated comfort, understated luxury. We design refined spaces with a Relaxed spirit. So immediately you get this very visceral sense of what Madeline's style is about. Another example is an architecture and interior design firm called Idea Space and their headline is We are architects and interior designers who can't stop thinking big. It goes on to say where others see limits, we see possibilities confronting design challenges with ease and excitement. And I love that because it just immediately gives you a sense of their approach. And their creative philosophy right away. When you land on this website, you immediately understand how they think, how they work, and whether that aligns with what you're looking for. And then I'll give you one more example, which is a designer in, in Arizona. Her name is Lidja Harkins and her headline is, it's very simple. It's just easygoing elegance. And then below that it says classic as a crisp white button down, expressive as the Arizona desert. Our thoughtful interiors are deeply personalized to reflect the way you live. I really like all of those because I feel like they're super specific. And they give you that enticing hook to just keep wanting to read more and find out more. So what I would expect to have happen is now if I went to one of those companies, Instagram feed or website portfolio, I have a sense of what I expect to see. And if I find that, then we've achieved this congruency, which builds trust in the expertise that they're promising in the first place. Go hand in hand, that design, the, those pictures and the words are building that circle of trust that says to the client, you're in the right place, you don't have to look any further, you have found the solution you're looking for, or, very quickly, you haven't, keep going. Yes, yes, exactly. Yeah, I mean really at the end of the day, all we're trying to do is help a client make a decision to stay or leave. Exactly. I believe that you have worked with or for El Decor. Is that correct? Yes. That sounds very fancy. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah. So, after college, I moved to New York City. With, you know, visions of working for a glamorous magazine in my head. And I, my first job was very unglamorous. It was as an editorial assistant at parenting magazine. I was 22, did not have children, knew nothing about parenting, but that was sort of how I got my foot in the door in the magazine editorial world. And then from there, I got a job as an editor at Elle Decor magazine, which was just a dream come true. And that was really my first taste of the interior design world. I didn't have any experience with interior design before that point, but it was really, um, an amazing opportunity to just get immersed in the world of luxury interiors. And it was the best education I could possibly have asked for in terms of, understanding the power of storytelling to really elevate and uplift the work of a designer. And yeah, it was, it was an incredible experience. So with that insider insight, if there's designers listening who would love to get themselves quoted in magazines or share their stories. What advice would you give to them? Building your brand is crucial because any editor who's even going to consider quoting you or including your work in a piece, they're going to always check out your social media. They're going to check out your website. And if you don't have that strong brand presence, everything's just going to fall apart from there. So I would say number one, it is very important to get your brand presence and your brand messaging consistent and clear. I would say it's always a good idea to build relationships. If you're going to be in New York, don't be afraid to reach out to an editor and say, Hey, I'd love to meet you for a coffee. You might get radio silence, but you might get a yes. And then you've built that connection. Um, this also requires a level of investment, but there is also working with a PR person who can help facilitate those relationships. I have a friend who's a very. successful architect, and she's basically served as her own PR person. She's had features in the New York Times, in Dwell, in Domino, and all she does is just go on their websites, find out their submissions, guidelines, and she submits the work herself. So you do, it is something that you can also do yourself. I think it just means having that boldness and having that confidence and believing that you deserve a place in those publications. Cause that's all she did. Her work is obviously brilliant, but she didn't have special connections. She didn't have. relationships. She just put her work out there and was confident in it and she's seen the rewards for that. I'm assuming that these brands want us to show up with magazine ready imagery, is that true? I'm really glad you brought that up because that's a very important point. Most magazines, I would say like 99 percent of magazines today will not have the budget to send out their own photographers. So that's another reason why it's very important to have amazing professional photography. If your goal is to get published, you need that. If you don't have it, there's no story. And another little tip for that is if you have a specific dream publication in mind, let's say that you want to be published in Lux, have a look at what photographers are, you know, showing up in Lux and get a sense of their work because they're the photographers who Lux are using. If you get your work photographed by those people, Then you increase your chances of your work being in the right style and being selected for those magazines. So you're saying it's not because necessarily of the relationship, like this photographer has gotten their work into the magazine, but more that the literal, Um, style of photography, the composition of it will match the magazine. Yes. Yeah. And I mean, the connection doesn't hurt either, but yeah, I mean, every magazine has its own style. It has its own sense of lighting and shadow and all of those visual. elements and finding a photographer who understands exactly what that publication wants is going to put you head and shoulders above the competition. Well, and it goes back to what you're saying about having a brand story, having a point of view and having one that's authentic to you. You know, if we got the golden opportunity, what would that look like for us? Is that showing up in an HGTV Television show. That's a very different goal than being on the cover of Architectural Digest. Those are totally different audiences. Yeah. And so using your words to shape that, using your photography to shape that, and then using your energy to get into the places you're trying to get to 10 years from now on day one, if possible. Yes. Yeah. Um, okay. So obviously that got us off of copywriting. I'm assuming that even Elle Decor has its own brand voice. Every single one of these places. uses words a little differently. True? Absolutely. So having cut your teeth in the luxury world of interior design, have you worked with interior designers who are focused on the more, you know, HGTV, real people, simple living kind of style? I wouldn't say the simple living HGTV population. I feel like most of the interior designers who come to me are really looking to elevate and they're looking for bigger budgets and You know, bigger projects, but that said, I don't have luxury is the right word because I work with designers who do care about that approachable, accessible design as well. It doesn't have to be, you know, a 30, 000 rug, but I have not worked with designers who are like looking to fill a home with pieces from a retail store, big box store. I feel like they're usually looking to kind of elevate, uh, And, um, work on those bigger budget projects. How risk? I think I also saw on your site that you have worked with West Elm. Am I making that up? No, that's, that's correct. After a job at El Decor, I decided that I wanted to get my feet wet in the marketing world, and so that's how I entered copywriting. I was a copywriter for four years at West Elm. And so how would you describe the difference? between the voice you used for El Decor and the voice used for West Elm. Yeah, so I think the big difference there is that copywriting is very different from content writing. And at El Decor, or for any kind of editorial publication, you're really creating content. Which means, You're creating words that are telling a story or informing people of something. And copywriting is also about storytelling, but it has a very distinct purpose from other content in the sense that copywriting is creating words with the specific intent to persuade someone to take an action. And that's the big difference. So if you're copywriting, for a website, there is going to be that editorial voice. There is going to be like elements of storytelling, but ultimately the overall purpose of the copy is to persuade the person who's reading that site to take a specific action. And everything needs to be written with that focus in mind. So that really takes us back to what you are doing for interior designers. How do we use these words to motivate the right client to take action by pushing the button, scheduling the meeting, filling out the form, etc.? Yes? Yes, yes. That's the higher arching strategy over everything that we do as copywriters. Fantastic. Is there anything else you really wish interior designers knew about copywriting that you'd like to leave them with today? Yeah, I would say to think about copywriting in the same way that you think about The way you design a space that it's really not just about stringing together words or making words sound nice or sound good. It's really about every little piece is strategically designed to come together as a cohesive whole in the same way that you're building a room. It's not about the individual pieces. Everything has to work together to create a cohesive picture. Sense and that works aesthetically and functionally and writing copy is exactly that same process. It's just about words rather than, you know, furnishings and objects and art and architectural details. And I would, I would really love to just convey that to interior designers because sometimes a designer will come to me and be like, the only reason I want to hire someone is because I just don't have time to do it myself. But I would just. advise you to think about it as, you know, if, if a homeowner came to you and said, I could do this myself, I just don't have the time for it. There's really an expertise and a strategy that we spend years honing and learning and developing in order to bring those words that look so effortless on a page. It kind of reminds me when we're designing the design process, there's frequently things that we need to incorporate into our designs that. On their own, a client might not like or appreciate because it's a very boring lamp or a very bold lamp, but it's an essential ingredient that as a designer, we know the job it's doing. Do you get that same kind of pushback from interior designers when they're like, I don't want to call to action here. And you're going, no, you really need one. Is there a little bit of a battle sometimes? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's where that trust comes in, in the same way that you ask your client to just trust you. You need that lamp. It's just an essential piece to get that overall effect that you're looking for. It's that same thing. And it's really about just trusting the expertise of the person that you've hired to do this work for you. So let's talk about trying to find and hire a really well qualified copywriter. Yeah, so Google is a great place to start. Um, there are so many interior design copywriters and that's just a good place to get started. But once you've like sort of gotten your list of everyone that you found on Google, how do you then narrow it down and find the right person? From there, I would say you want to check out their Instagram or their whatever their social media platforms are. You want to check out their website. You want to check out their portfolio of work. And if you're looking at their work, have a look at, do they all sound the same? Because then that's a problem because then they're writing in their own voice. But if you look at their work and you see that they're all different, then that demonstrates that that writer is able to capture different brand voices, and they're able to make their clients stand out through their brand messaging. And you want to check out what. expertise they're bringing to the table. I think it's really important to hire someone that has an understanding of the design world of how interior design works of of the industry as a whole. I think this is one of those industries where that's a crucial component to getting it right. What do you think happens? When somebody hires somebody outside the industry, where do the gaps show up? Well, I think the gaps show up in not having a clear understanding of what the pain points are of the interior design customer It shows up in not understanding the jargon And not being able to translate that into words that actually make sense for the lay person It shows up when listening to a story about a project, not being able to pull out the right details or even understand what's important about the work that the designer did. So I think it shows up in all of those ways, and I think it would be really hard for someone to get as deep as you need to get to create the right brand messaging if you also have to get over the hurdle of trying to even understand the basics of the industry. Yeah, because it is a complicated industry, and it's one with no standards in terms of which services we offer, how long things will take, who will be in charge of what parts of the process, where we'll be sourcing from, how much those things will cost. It's, it's this crazy puzzle that has no picture that you're following. And every single one of us are making up our companies as we go. And then somehow we're supposed to translate that into something that a client will confidently understand and hire you for it's bananas. It is when you put it that way. And I think also it's important when you're, when you're looking to hire a copywriter is. Get on the phone with them, like get, have that discovery call and get a sense of if they understand what the problem is that you're facing, because a problem is what compelled you to start searching in the first place. And you want someone who deeply understands that problem and has a plan in place to help you fix that problem and accomplish whatever your goal might be. Going back to El Decor for a second, what made you decide to go out on your own as a copywriter? I had always wanted to do my own thing. I was never someone that enjoyed a nine to six routine and being told I had to be somewhere at a certain place and I just always wanted flexibility and my husband and I decided to move to London. About seven years ago. And for me, that was like a sign from the universe to get out and do my own thing. Like making that move was assigned to just take that leap. So yeah, that's sort of, it was sort of a leap of faith for me. So you've also had to do all this work for yourself, which of course is the hardest, is to promote your own brand. Can you give us in a nutshell, the services that you offer? What, what should people come to you for? Yes. So in a nutshell, I offer brand messaging strategy. So that's high level. If you, you, you don't really have any sense of what your brand messaging needs to be about your tone, your voice, we can do that higher level strategy work together. I write website copy, I write blogs, I write email marketing, so I can do like a conversion email sequence, or a welcome series, or I also do a full year of emails package. Which is really great in the sense of you can just sort of set it and forget it. And your email is just working for you behind the scenes. I also do VIP days, which is for people who might not want to invest in a full website, but they just need help with aspects of their messaging. So, that's it in a nutshell, and they can find me on Instagram, my handle is just my full name, Kamala Nair, and they can find me on my website, which is KamalaNairInc. com. and obviously those links will be in the show notes, like in any good podcast. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your expertise with us today. Thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate it. I appreciate it. This has been fun. Well, my friends, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Camilla and I are. If you're not quite ready to hire at her level, remember that my nail, your niche course is here to help you figure out your message so that you can get the best clients as early as possible in your career and start building the portfolio of your dreams. The sooner you do that, the sooner you're going to have that business that makes you seriously happy and the kinds of projects that are really going to take advantage of your best skills, strengths, and passions. So come find me@seriouslyhappy.com. And of course, if this conversation resonated with you, I'd love to hear about it. So come find me on Instagram at BC. Seriously happy. Let's be friends and celebrate all the things that we're doing together as entrepreneurs and interior designers. Bye for now.