Woman, 39, learns how to make a phone call
Some (late to the party) realisations on communication
I had a revelation earlier this week: I’m good at making connections with people.
That’s not meant in a bragging kind of way, but more that it’s easy to overlook skills that we’ve picked up throughout our life and career and see them as ‘just what everybody does’.
It turns out that trying to seek genuine connection and build good relationships with clients isn’t what everybody does.
If you’ve been here for a while, you will know what I’m about to say next, but for anyone new here, the next paragraph is for your benefit. Oh… and welcome!
Last year I left my long-time job as a teacher (I was Director of Music in a large independent school) to become a freelance interior designer. This is the short version btw, you can read the full, detailed version here.
I’d become very interested in interior design through the renovation of three properties that I’d bought and sold with my husband over the past 12 years and I wanted to help other people create what I had made happen in our own homes.
Fast-forward to now, almost a year on, and it’s fair to say that there have been peaks and troughs but I am really doing it. I have various other strands to my work as well as interior design, but I’ve had a reasonable number of clients over the past year and I’ve been able to help people realise a vision or inspire them to have the confidence to go with an idea. It’s been very satisfying so far.
Until this week, almost all the correspondence with clients has been via email/text.
This is for various reasons: most people seem to prefer it, it helps to get a sense of if someone is serious or not, and it allows me to clearly lay out the services I offer. That’s what I thought anyway, but much of this might be based on how I like to communicate with people. After all I am an introvert and honestly the thought of answering calls from random numbers doesn’t fill me with joy.