How to use social media to grow your business, Sophie Paterson Interiors

0:00Today, I'm joined by the founder of Sophie Patterson Interiors, Sophie herself. Since launching her studio in 2008, Sophie has completed over 80 luxury projects worldwide, but it's her strategic use of social media that's transformed her business into the global luxury brand that it is today. With over a million followers across Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, Sophie has built a loyal international audience, opened doors for collaborations, and attracted clients from around the world. Today in her episode, she shares how founders can use social media platforms not just to showcase their work, but to grow a business, build credibility, and reach global customers, and also how to set boundaries around it.

0:40Hi, Sophie. Thank you for joining How to Start Up today. It is great to have you on the show because I know we're going to talk about all things social media as a founder. But before we do that, I'd love it if you could introduce a bit about yourself and the business that you've started. Hi, Juliet. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm Sophie Patterson, founder of Sophie Patterson Interiors. We're a high-end interior design studio. We do projects all over the world. And we also have several product lines that we do in collaboration with other brands, such as furniture, wallpaper, home accessories.

1:11And then most recently, I've just launched an online interior design course called the Sophie Patterson Academy. And when did you start your business? Oh gosh, I actually can't remember life pre-Sophie Patterson Interiors. I've been known to introduce myself as Sophie Patterson Interiors before. I set up the business in 2008 and I did a couple of projects for a developer before that. So yeah, nearly half my life. And with social media, when did you start using that for your business? So my social media journey happened very organically because I remember I had a web developer at the time who told me she was going to put a link, Instagram didn't even exist, but she told me she was going to put a link to Facebook.

1:51and she said if I do this you must update it regularly she was very strict because it looks bad if it's not regular I've got her to thank for joining Facebook and I guess that was probably around sort of 2009 we set up a Facebook interiors page actually I don't do that page anymore and that was really key because I ended up posting about our projects behind the scenes what I was doing and my whole driver for doing that was I didn't have enough projects necessarily to populate an entire website. But I remember being a recent graduate and all my friends was going off into corporates and they were all talking about their big high-flying jobs.

2:26And I didn't want them all to be thinking, oh, she's just dossing about fluffing cushions. So it was more from an ego thing that I was like, no, look, I am doing real work. And so I'd put quite a lot of content on that Facebook page. And through that Facebook page, I actually found my first non-developer client, a private client. And then I joined Instagram in 2012. Again, didn't really know what I was doing. I don't think any of us realized how important social media would be. My very first post was a bottle of champagne. It was more like typical older millennial like, oh, is this work? Has this gone on?

3:00Is this out in the world, world wide web? And then very quickly, it took a different turn. And where has it ended up today for you in social media? How integral to your business is it? I mean, huge. I think it's fair to say social media has built my business. It's such a big part of our business. It's how we get our private clients for our interior design projects. Most of our clients now, I can pinpoint either they found me through one of our various social media platforms, whether that's YouTube or Instagram, or their friend who recommended us to them originally came through social media. So I think it's been so key for that side of the business.

3:35Also for driving the sales of all our collections for our online Academy, it's been massive for us. And I think with that huge audience, we've got over a million people that follow us across our different platforms. I also feel a huge sense of responsibility. So as much as it builds and drives our business, in some ways it slows me down because I say no to so much that gets offered to me because I feel a sense of responsibility. I'm not just selling to a blind audience. I know these people. We've engaged over years and years. They've watched my journey. We've had conversations in DMs that I really care about what I put on my platform, what I recommend to them.

4:10So it's been great for the business, but you feel a big sense of responsibility with it as well. I've often called it a necessary evil because I've struggled with it, but only because I've struggled with my own boundaries with it. And I set myself time limits and all that kind of thing. And everyone said, do you really need it? Yes, because it forms part of our lookbook. So if somebody hears about us, they'll check out our website, they'll check our LinkedIn posts, they'll check out our Instagram. They'll get a sense of who we are and they can get to know us without even emailing us or calling us.

4:38For you, has it provided that sort of screening as part of the screening process with clients? Most of my clients aren't very active on social media. And yeah, we always, before we work with someone, obviously we'll do a little bit of research just to make sure that we're the right fit. We can only take on a certain amount of clients every year. But yeah, I think like a lot of our clients will not only feel familiar and comfortable with me but like members of our team as well that all feature on YouTube or Instagram and it's really nice for them because they feel like they know our team before they even start working and they're also quite familiar with our process because they've watched various videos about we share a lot of our process online not only through our online design academy but also like free content on YouTube and Instagram so I feel like they feel a bit more prepared because I think hiring an interior designer is a really intimidating thing.

5:27No matter where you are in life, no matter what budget you've got, you're essentially trusting someone with your biggest asset. So having that kind of insight and soft introduction through social media, I think, has been really helpful for them. Going back to the beginning, what were the first few posts that you really thought this is going to move the needle for your business? I didn't really realize it was going to move the needle, to be honest. The reason why, aside from being told off by my web developer and said you have to post this regularly for me what really like drove me to post regularly was having a sense of community because I think as a founder it's so lonely and I worked by myself five years I did all the jobs in the business and I worked from my garage and I just really wanted to be able to connect with like-minded people I loved the fact that I could reach out to different brands in the industry other designers and have that kind of sense of community and relationships and for me I was just sharing what I was doing because I still had that kind of like wide-eyed enthusiasm and just thought wow this is so cool I'm so passionate about design I can't believe I'm getting to do this and people are hiring me to do their home and I wanted to share not just the end results but also the process so I think that for me was really important having that sense of community and I think that then transferred into like the content I was posting then I realized my audience were becoming my community and I was building a community there and a lot of them could relate to me a lot of them were maybe aspiring interior designers or people doing up their own home and they really loved the fact that I was sharing behind the scenes like real raw behind the scenes not just the end pretty pictures and also bits of my life as well you know I think if you're going to be on social media you said it yourself like you've got to have boundaries what are you comfortable with and it's not just important for yourself to have those boundaries, but also for your audience because they want consistency.

7:15So if one week you decide to share loads of your life and it comes out of the blue from having never shared anything about your life, you're confusing your audience. If they happen to have not seen a post for yours, which can happen quite easily with the algorithm, how it is, and then all of a sudden up pops a story about your gym routine and they're like, who's this person? I'm not interested in gym routines. Unfollow. You have to work out what you're comfortable with and then do that consistently so that it's on brand, you've thought about it. It's not just maybe you've had a glass of champagne on a Friday night and you're like, well, let's post this.

7:45Everything should be really considered because your personal brand is your brand. How did you work out what content you should be posting and when? Because there's so much around content of sort of the type of visual. Is it video? Is it carousel? Is it real versus how often? What time of day? How did you learn all of that? It's been trial and error, I would say. You kind of work out what your audience resonates with. And not every audience is the same. You know, what my audience likes when they're active will be different to someone else's. So I just have this like idea in my head. And for me, even now, even though it's like such a big business and this is so key to it, I do like to keep it quite organic because I'm a real geek and I'm constantly researching.

8:27I love like nothing more on a Saturday night than like diving into a podcast about what the algorithm wants or different ideas. And I think if you get too structured and you're like, well, Monday, this is our content pillar. Wednesday, this is our content pillar. You don't allow yourself to have that ability to flex. So we still do it organically. And I did everything on social media myself up until April. I hired a social media manager. Well, she wants to hire one social media manager, but I hired two because they were both so amazing. And that's been amazing for me in terms of being able to create more content, hit more platforms.

9:01We do everything in-house. And I thought it was going to free up some of my time. But actually, I think it's so important to have that personal aspect. I think you can always tell if a founder or someone key in the business is involved with the social media strategy because it feels more current, it feels more relevant. And what I think is really important with your social media, no matter what business you're doing, is it's got to be almost like a little bit you're seeing something that you're not meant to see. Like you're really kind of spying on behind the scenes. If it's too polished, it just becomes a bit boring.

9:31You were so right. And I was listening to the news this morning and saying that half the internet is AI generated and not real. But does that matter? And it was around the moral aspect of content. And if AI is talking to AI, if humans talking to AI, we've all been absorbing content that's been pre-written or pre-recorded and edited. Where is that line? but I'm so with you. I enjoy content where I can relate to the person giving it to me. And I know for myself, like posting from my LinkedIn is very different from posting to our company's LinkedIn. And we almost shouldn't really bother having a company LinkedIn because people much rather hear first person.

10:08For you, what do you think has helped grow such a loyal community over the years? Because you're across, I believe, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. That's correct. I think just sharing honestly and openly, I'm quite an open and honest person and often even without online course I said to my team I want to include a little black book of all our favorite suppliers and they were like oh okay they're like so even this supplier yes even this supplier yes and like they were shocked but they were like why why are we giving so much of this IP away like this is too important to our business but I disagree I think like the more you share and the less you focus on gatekeeping and just I don't feel that like by impairing other people, I'm disempowering myself.

10:52I feel like if you share and you help others, my clients aren't hiring me because of like the place where I get my curtains made or where I get my furniture or my carpet from. They're hiring us for our vision and our customer service and our ability to design their home and make it as good as it can be for them. So I think that translates through to the free content we share on social media as well. Like we do share really openly we do really help our followers you know they'll dm me even if there's nothing in it for me me or one of my social medias will respond to them we share what we can and we really want to help our audience and i think they can feel that they can feel that this for me you know my social media didn't start as a business strategy it started as a sense of community and that continues this day and i think they can see the difference you know we're all wise into you know swipe up by their swipe up and like false recommendations and I think when you stay authentic your audience stays very little to you.

11:49And you build the trust and as you're going back to the top of the conversation where your clients are trusting you with their home you want to build the trust. It's so interesting to hear you say this because I'm constantly sitting on a fence of what do we give away, what do we just automatically want to share, be helpful versus we do need to have a cash flow, we are a business, we're not a charity, where do you draw that line? And with content given it takes a lot of time even organic natural content does take time just even sit down and post and think through what caption and link you might want to include do you have a sort of set amount of time per week that you give it and then you stop or do you just let it run ragged and do as much as you possibly can i think the main focus of our business is the like the couture interior design aspect so my clients that are paying design fees they always come first and everything else has to be slotted in around it.

12:39That's why, you know, with social media, I've got social media managers, I'm still really heavily involved, but they know, you know, they work full time for me. They know what's going on in the business. If I'm flying to America for a project, they're not going to be able to capture content. So we plan some stuff ahead, but equally we've got a lot of conversations going. I was in LA and San Francisco last week for a project and I was messaging them saying, look, I know I approved all the content, but can you just send me the outline of what we're posting so that if I was to post from LA, it's not looking unnatural with what you're posting on the grid.

13:11But I don't think you can necessarily put in a time limit. I think you just go with it when you can. And especially when I was doing it by myself before I had social media managers, I would take breaks sometimes. I know it's really bad for the algorithm, but it's also about your mental health. And if I was going through something tough and I needed to take some time off, then I would take time off. And our audience were really sweet. I would return two weeks later and be like, are you okay? You've posted every day for the last 10 years. I'm really worried about you. And that's so nice, but the algorithm will punish you for that.

13:42So it's like a big decision. And I don't like to post in advance or like schedule things too much. So that's been the one benefit for me now. And I know that I'm in a really lucky position that I've now built a business where I can afford to have two social media managers. And I think for us, it's proved itself that it's like such a key part of our business. It's worth investing in. I'm actually going to hire another person, not so that I can remove myself from it, but just so I can make sure their workload is manageable. They often say to me, I don't know how you did this all by yourself. There's two of us plus you.

14:13They work flat out. Often they all want to stay there for like an hour after work and I'm pushing them out the office saying, you've got to go home, we've got to have a life. But that's, it's endless. And I think in any path of starting a business, and I knew this already when I came into it from communications and PR, because you could always pitch another editor, you can always find another angle there is no finished to-do list and having OCD and going into communications was probably a terrible idea I should have learned that was not good for me but starting a business that you could always do more and I think with social media I constantly sit on the fence with my team they debate with me and challenge me on it of you could do more founder leg content you could do more to camera I'm like yes but I don't want to and I don't feel I've got anything to say and I'm definitely not going to do a get ready with me or anything like that but they're like well the algorithm will thank you for it and I'm like I don't want my life ruled by an algorithm and that's my choice and I know that we're missing out from awareness and engagement and potentially clients but it's sort of drawing that line that I've set up a business it has to work for me I can't give everything to it how did you find that boundary for yourself?

15:18I think that's I love see this is what I love about podcasts and I love actually coming on podcasts I very rarely get to speak to other particularly women in business and like have these conversations I I don't think this is something that I've ever spoken to a man about, but I probably have a different perspective. And because I get asked a lot by sort of new designers or people that want to set up their own business, like, what should I do? And I don't always follow my own advice. But as you're saying to me, like you're saying your team is saying you should do more talking to camera pieces. I agree with them.

15:46And I think like I am an introvert. I hate being filmed. I still, even though I've done it for five years, multiple times every week, I still get anxiety. when I was filming my online course I filmed consistently for a year to produce 14 hours of content and it was like just talking to a camera like engaging but you know when I'm filming my YouTube walking around a project I find that a lot less intense but I feel like it's really important to try these things because if you want to grow your business you have to like be willing to put yourself out of your comfort zone and as soon as you say that that's the same advice I give aspiring designers and it makes me laugh because I'll see them year on year like at different events and different talks I'm doing, they're like, oh, I did it.

16:27And I actually follow them because I really am interested and engaged in their journey. And I'm like, yeah, go you. I'm like, so proud of you. You're doing it. And then I'm thinking to myself, but you haven't done any two camera pieces for a while and you know it'd be good for your engagement too. And so it's in the back of my mind all the time. And I also say to my social media team, please don't ask me if you can film me, just film everything. Like me and the team will get used to you just filming and we'll relax into it because real content is so much more interesting. I'd almost rather you put a mic on me the minute I arrive in the day and then take it off because I have to be able to multitask.

16:59I can't just, yeah, I'll have some day set aside if we've got to film a particular campaign or we've got to shoot. The level of content they want from me, I can't just set that time aside. I've got to be actually able to run the business. And again, it comes back to thinking like, what do I find most interesting? Well, I love reality TV when it's like really real. Like, I'll admit I love the Kardashians and I know people love to hate them but I'm full of admiration for them because what they've built how they've monetized things it's so impressive and yet they must be so tempting for them to like really edit out the bad bits but they keep it in and that's what people love to see and I'm not saying necessarily that I would do that but I think my approach to social media and like I always like to think every year like what am I going to do for the business for social media next year I want to be more vulnerable and more open I'm going to be renovating my home and we all know you know you're renovating right now you know there's so many highs and lows and I think it will be really interesting to see that from the perspective of sort of fly on the wall of watching a designer go through the highs and lows just like everyone else does you know I've got budget I just got the prices back from my contractors and all the subcontractors this week I've totally blown the budget I'm about three times over the budget and now I've got to scale back and it's like so it happens to the best of them this is reassuring I'm like, as much as it's horrible to live it, this is going to make great content.

18:15So in the back of my mind, I'm like, oh, this is really annoying. I'm like, don't skip out this bit. Get the team to film you being really stressed out about the fact that we've now got to... The honesty and the vulnerability of it as well. The humanity, people can relate to that. And that's why I think I love podcasting so much because everyone understands a conversation like this. Today, we'll have listeners and we're all comfortable with the fact that we have eavesdroppers and we're welcoming them in. And it's almost like you're sitting in a cafe and you're dropping on a couple sitting next to you.

18:41And everyone's all right with it. And it's one run down on that vulnerability. A, because it's not live. It's not necessarily my face. And I can edit it if I need to. But my team of like, you're too polished. You're too well trained. If you were more you, like the dad jokes and the silliness that we get to see, your listeners will bond with that more. And I think with podcasting, it's really hard as well, because it is recorded and you put it out on, it's a one-way street. And you don't get any feedback with social media. you can get quite a lot of feedback, both positive and negative, unfortunately.

19:12But you're making me laugh because I remember last year when I moved house, I was like, right, two things next year, I'm going to get to the Antarctic and see the penguins and I'm going to move to Charleston in the Cotswolds. My friend's like, okay, then whatever. Turns out going to the Antarctic is way easier than buying a house in the Cotswolds, especially when you're self-employed. But when I started painting and I thought in my delirium of tiredness, I time-lapsed myself and chucked up on Instagram never have I had more engaged content than me painting a room in old sweatpants from school days compared to like Antarctica with paintings like guys seriously and recently I went to Uganda to see gorillas like no one cares they want to care they really care about paint even a 23 year old in the village like Jules I'm so invested which room you're going to do next I say what is that I'm saying like is and this is in terms of the type of business you're in it it plays really well to visual content.

20:01So it works really well on social media. I'd argue that as a PR and a podcast consultancy, our content isn't as engaging for social media because it's not as visual, it's much more audio. I mean, I'm trying to make excuses a lot to do it. Do you think you should consider their social media use or content strategy? I think you should consider it a lot. And I think touching on that point about is it aesthetic, that's a really interesting perspective because yeah, it does definitely help that I've got like visually engaged I can do before and afters. We're designing beautiful homes all over the world.

20:32And most of our clients do let us share their homes, which is amazing. But actually, what I've realized is like, we'll spend a lot of money on production. We'll have videographers, professional photographers. We'll put together these beautiful posts or reels or videos. And then it will do well. It will be good. But when I think how much money and time we invest in it, I'm like, was that really worth it? then equally I will go around with my shaky little iPhone where the lighting's not like perfectly set and put like a reel up that I haven't even thought about and it might do five times as well so I think people overly worry about like having a really curated feed I do like a curated feed because I also am a perfectionist and I think that's like part of our brand we need to make sure it looks good and people are gonna judge us but what I think is a really good hack is if you don't have like a beautifully designed office or maybe not everything you're doing is like really visually engaging is do carousel posts carousel posts are doing so well anyways instagram loves them and have the cover image something beautiful whether it's like text with a nice background or you could do a personal branding shoot where you look great you look really empowering and inspirational and then afterwards you can have the carousels or the videos of whatever your content is it's like really educational and like really adds a lot of value but doesn't necessarily look as good.

21:49I think people do get a little bit paralyzed of fear and Canva can only get you so far in terms of the design. So as a member of my team that is art, basically she's now head of brand. She took over the whole design of our business, redesigned the website, redid all the Instagram. And I now send her stuff saying, can you sign this off for me, Francesca? She's like, do you know it's your company? I'm like, yes, but you're really good for the board. She's very, her eye is amazing. This is it. It can hold you back to perfectionist about it. That's a really good hack. What other hacks do you have for us?

22:21Another one that I do, and this was triggered by something you said, is like I become less a perfectionist. I think we can all criticize ourselves. We can all hate the sound of our own voice or think, oh, does that sound silly? I'll review everything that goes out. I watch the full YouTube, but I don't worry about how I'm coming across. I think we're just our own worst critics. So I will let stuff go out. And once I've reviewed it, just to make sure there's no mistakes or anything like that, then I'll just I won't think about it like I just move straight on to the next thing and I also don't worry about if there's any negative comments you know I'm really lucky for the number of followers we've got we get very rarely any kind of negative comments I can't remember the last one but there'll always be the odd thing if it's about a client's home I will remove it because I'm like that you can say what you want about me and my home but that's that person's private property and they've been kind enough to share it but if anyone ever says anything critical about me I just don't take it personally I've had over the years you know I got caught out by some journalist that worked the Daily Mail and she said can we do this article and this is what the headline is going to be and this was going to be about and I think the original title was is this most beautiful home in the UK and I was like fantastic like you can't get better PR amazing sign me up and then what she proceeded to do it did really well the online version and then I clicked on a few hours later because I was getting all these messages from friends being like are you okay and I my daughter is really I think she was like six months old at the time and I'd taken her swimming.

23:45I was only working part-time that day. And she'd changed the title from what we'd agreed to the new mum to make all other mothers jealous. She'd gone through my Instagram taking like photos that I'd shared. And it was just like that typical sort of daily mail angle where they were like, we're just going to get the trolls out. And there was 2000 comments of absolute ritual poison, but it was so bad. I remember I had two of my designers staying with me because my husband was traveling for work that we opened a bottle of wine that night and we were reading them out loud to each other and we were literally like rolling around laughing I was like this is actually I'm so glad that I had this because the comments couldn't be any worse and it kind of just teaches you and you think about well who is it that's got time to read the Daily Mail online and then also write a comment in the middle of a day on a Tuesday it's someone that's sat at home that's maybe not that necessarily that happy and I think like if you are the kind of person that wants to go out of your way to write something negative then I'm not really interested in your opinion because you're probably not going to be someone that I admire or respect.

24:44And after that, things just don't affect me. I just think, oh, it says more about you than it does about me. I'm very comfortable with who I am. I know I'm a good person. I know we do good work. So if it upsets you, then that's your issue. In the last few episodes, I've asked quite a few of the founders how they've managed social media. And the topic of the episode could be something completely different, but we've always ended up on that topic at the end recently, which I thought was quite interesting and quite useful now we're talking to you about it. that boundary it was really and her question for you for this episode is from her but she was saying she just doesn't handle social media well and at some point she'd like to be social media free because she's not handling it well and that boundary is really really important to put in and I think at the end of this year I've concluded I did it works for my business but I need to be better boundaried with it what advice would you give to founders on how to create those boundaries for themselves.

25:39I think maybe think about what aspect of social media doesn't feel good to you. Is it you're worried about people's comments? Is it, and I think this is quite a common one, like are you consuming too much content of your competitors and making you feel like you're not good enough or you should be doing more? And I think for me, like I feel bad, but I don't have time to consume content anymore. Like I spend all my time either running the business or producing content. And I think that's where the shift's been for me is if I'm looking at something I'm like this is making me stressed or making me not feel good enough I don't want to unfollow anyone but I'll just mute them I don't need to consume this content anymore like I still support you but what you're sharing doesn't make me feel good so I'm just not going to waste my time looking at it that's where I sort of would go down the holes of seeing other than different or my sector but it's like well I've decided not to do this and that's on me they have decided to become a to camera founder and their choice and I think if I could remember my strategy for myself I would have a better boundary with it rather than those when you're knackered you probably haven't slept you've had a stressful client or something like that and then you see something on Instagram where someone seemingly is killing it in some area but you also forget that social media is only the positive stuff you never really see the gritty and maybe that's why the vulnerability does well because people do want to see a bit more grit and a bit more real.

26:54Another thing that I've taught myself over the years is there's a cost attached to everything So fine, you want to go out there and you want to be like absolutely smashing it. You want to see your followers go through the roof. You want to be doing projects all over the world. The cost attached to that is for me personally, I will be stressed. I'll spend less time with my family. I might feel overwhelmed. I might get burnt out. So I don't actually feel envious when I see other people having teams of like 50, 60 people. That's just not something I aspire to. The success I want is, you know, I love doing my job.

27:27I love being able to do a really good job for my clients. I know how many projects I can take on every year and deliver something really good for them. I feel stressed if I don't feel like I'm delivering enough value for people. And then with the scalable areas of my business, you know, I thought quite a few years ago, I want to be able to scale my business. The way I'm going to scale my business is not by taking on more staff, taking on more projects, because everyone wants me. I can only divide myself so many ways. I'll feel guilty if I'm not giving them what I should be. I'll do the online, I'll do the collections, I'll do the products.

27:56And again, I didn't want to do that all in-house because then I've got to hire more people. I'm going to have a staff of like 60 people. I don't find that relaxing either. I don't particularly like managing people. So I did that all with other people who I thought were the best at what they do. You know, it was all tried and tested. We'd worked with them for our design projects. I knew they had great quality. I knew they had great customer service and I felt safe aligning with them. That's really scalable. All I have to do is design it and then promote it, do some shoots every, you know, twice a year.

28:22And they deal with all the logistics. They deal with all the manufacturing. so I think you can scale in different ways and I think we've sort of had this real transition for our sort of generation of like what success used to look like and now what success can look like now and I don't want to just work harder I just want to work smarter I want to enjoy the success I've already got I want to enjoy my life nothing's given and I always think probably like two or three times a week I remind myself is this going to be important on my deathbed am I going to regret this so I think the only thing I'll regret is not having spent more time with my family, not having done the things that I kept putting off, whether it was going to the Antarctic and seeing the penguins or, you know, going on a safari, whatever it is that I want to do, I make sure that I'm on track.