Key Accomplishment: Say it Loud, Say it Proud

656 Wildrose Way • Louisville, CO 80027 • 303.665.6688 • 303-589-3013
Fred@FredBerns.com • www.InteriorDesignBusiness.net

What is your proudest professional accomplishment?

I’m shocked how many interior design professionals struggle with that question.

I pose it to designers when I coach them and/or write their personal bios, and other promotional materials, and all too often I see and hear them struggle with it.

Why is that?

Why can design professionals answer the most complex questions about architectural detail and accessories and color and cabinetry and finishes and flooring, but they hem and haw, and stumble and bumble and choke on questions about their career achievements?

Maybe it’s because many of them take themselves, and their many accomplishments for granted.

Many forget about — or at least downplay — magnificent projects they completed, prestigious clients they served, and impressive awards and recognition they received earlier in their career.

“Who cares about that stuff?”  a designer asked me the other day, very nearly causing me to tumble off my chair in disbelief.

“Well, the people who hire you care,” I said.

If you’re one of those professionals convinced that self promotion is unnecessary because your work “sells itself,” let me convince you of something else:

It doesn’t.

Not in these highly competitive times, when it’s never been easier to get elsewhere the design services and products you sell.

If you manage to “forget” about your major milestones, and where and when you’ve been published, and the daunting challenges you’ve overcome, who’s going to remember?

You need to become the world’s #1, foremost, premier, most authoritative, most outspoken expert on…YOU.

Never, ever take for granted the Star that You Are.

You need to spell out your special-ness in a single sentence.

And you need to be able to cite your proudest professional accomplishment in a New York minute.

Fred Berns helps interior design professionals dramatically increase sales and profits by promoting themselves more effectively. For information about his coaching, promotional copy writing, speaking programs and educational tools for designers, visit www.interiordesignbusiness.net, or contact him at 303-589-3013 or Fred@FredBerns.com.