How the UK Ivy Community Can Help Your Business Thrive
The Ivy community on Facebook is the #1 community for designers. The group exists exclusively for Ivy members as a safe space for designers to break the barriers of competition and come together as a community.
This open, safe space can do wonders for your business. Without concerns about over-sharing and competition, designers gain valuable insights from the community.
Here are the 4 key benefits you stand to gain by joining the UK Ivy community:
1. Ask anything
The Ivy community is a trusted space exclusively for you and your design peers. It’s a place for you to engage in topics that you might not be able to engage in anywhere else.
This is a unique opportunity to talk to others about how they grew their bottom line, how they charge clients, how they structure markups, how they deal with difficult clients, how they navigate blunders, and so much more.
You can ask anything. Take advantage of it.
2. Share knowledge, gain knowledge
The community has become a central hub for a unique knowledge exchange. It’s this open exchange of information that allows businesses to grow and designers to help their peers in a way that never existed before.
Lindsey Borchard of Lindsey Brooke Design shares, “I’ve probably shaved off at least 3-5 years of costly mistakes because of the knowledge I’ve learned from these powerful, incredible business owners. This part of Ivy is priceless.”
Designers share their experiences and knowledge in the community, and gain just as much, if not more in return.
You can actually access a long list of documents in the community that designers have shared to help their peers. Beyond the official document sharing, there’s also the daily knowledge exchange that occurs every time a designer asks for help.
Like when Ivy designer Barbara turned to the community for help dealing with a “red flag” client who questioned her design fee after the work had been done. Laura helped her by sharing a letter she wrote to a client when dealing with a similar issue.
Or when Ivy designer Tiffany decided it was time to break up with a client, Jennifer helped her word a polite, yet assertive email to part ways on good terms.
And the time Ivy designer Michelle needed help managing the multiple deliveries to her home every day while she worked from home. She got over 20 responses with helpful tips and tricks.
The list goes on and on.
Take it from Ivy Co-Founder, Lee Rotenberg, “The Ivy community is a free-flowing exchange of knowledge and insights. The more you engage with it, the stronger it becomes for everyone.”
3. Use it as your design-specific search engine
The more robust the community becomes, the more you can find in it. Today, a designer looking for advice in the community may not even need to write a post. You can simply search the group by topic or keyword and will likely find what you need.
When I have 5-10 minutes of spare time I’ll scroll through the most recent posts in the Ivy community. It’s a great source of information. A lot of the questions have been asked, so I’ll go in and search for what I need.
Boo Randle | Boo Randle Interiors
You’ll find everything from markup strategy and profit margins to recommendations for bookkeepers and assistants. The best part about searching in the community? You know the answers are real, candid and from your peers.
You also know you can count on the community to help you source. Any item, any time.
Barbara Town of Town Lifestyle + Design says, “I love that I can post a quick question or photo of just about anything, and within a few minutes, the Ivy community seems to have the answer.”
4. Build your support network
Working as an interior designer can feel isolating. Being a part of the Ivy community means having a place to turn when you need to vent, need advice, or simply feel like connecting with other designers.
Kelly Esposito of Harper Haus Interiors shares, “I’ve learned that I can ask anything and someone is always there to help! For most of my professional fashion career, I felt the cut-throat corporate lifestyle. With Ivy, I feel like I am surrounded by people that want me to succeed as much as I want them to. It’s been so refreshing!”
Having a group of like-minded professionals to turn to truly is priceless. With the Ivy community blooming in the UK, now is the time to join.
Briony Reyne of Reyne Design shares, “It would be great if the UK group were more active as we all have a lot to learn and share and we can definitely help each other out. I love the feeling of solidarity, support and community on the US group but the UK industry is very different to the US. I’d be more than happy to share our knowledge and experience with other designers and know we could benefit from their knowledge too.”
If you haven’t already, we invite you to join the UK Ivy Community on Facebook today. After all, your experiences and expertise are unique — your community should be too.