Building Skills, Confidence, and Community in the Workroom Industry with Ceil DiGuglielmo

TRANSCRIPT

William Hanke (00:00)
Welcome back to Marketing Panes where we talk with real window treatment professionals, business owners and service providers about what’s working in marketing and what’s changing in the industry.

Today’s guest is Ceil DiGuglielmo a longtime workroom pro turned educator and the current steward of the Curtains and Soft Furnishings Resource Library.

one of the most comprehensive collections of training and tools in the industry. She spent years helping fabricators and designers not only level up their skills, but build confidence and community along the way. We’ll talk about.

what today’s workroom professionals need most, what’s shifting and how people learn the trade, and why education and support can’t be one size fits all. Let’s get into it.

Ceil, first of all, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Ceil (00:55)
Well, thank you. It’s my pleasure.

William Hanke (00:58)
Glad to have you on. ⁓ How did you first get into this industry?

Ceil (01:04)
Well, it’s interesting. Well, I think especially for people my age who are in the industry, it started out as I chose to stay home when my oldest daughter was born. And a few months into that, I was like, this isn’t quite what I expected. And I also needed to make some more money. And I had some skills. I knew how to sell. My very first business was making bridal headpieces. And I literally would make a headpiece, photograph it, take it apart, make another headpiece, actually, my husband photographed

He was a photographer at the time. And I put together a book and then I started advertising locally. And I did that for a couple years, but I had been in business. I worked for a retail, large retailer in the Philadelphia area. I just did not know how to run a business. And I ended up going to a SCORE meeting for female entrepreneurs. And they are the service core of retired executives if people don’t know who they are.

William Hanke (01:57)
Okay.

Ceil (02:02)
It was eye-opening and I learned a lot about how to run my business. I got myself a score mentor and I met two interior designers there who were looking for someone to make soft furnishings and window treatments for them.

And it was like the perfect alignment. ⁓ I was able to work with them. And since they were new, I could say to them, I have no idea how to make that, but I will find out. And it was, I wasn’t embarrassed or trying to prove myself. They were new. There were things they didn’t know. So it was a great start. And then I sort of fell into, I found out about other people in the industry through a conference that was advertised. And I went.

William Hanke (02:34)
Yeah.

Ceil (02:46)
and I sat down in my first class and it was like, ⁓ these are my people. Like this is what I want to be doing. And I realized it was in fact a business that fabricating window treatments could be a career for me. And it could be something I could work around my family schedule when I needed to and grow it as my family grew.

William Hanke (02:59)
Yeah.

Yeah, I love that you say this could be a business. I remember that as well. Like, ⁓ I could probably do this. This could be a thing, right? Yeah, that’s awesome. So you’ve worked in several corners of the trade now. What experiences shaped that approach?

Ceil (03:20)
Yes, it’s gonna be a thing.

Well, we talk a lot about learning to say no, but it’s also important to say yes. And I said yes to a lot of odd things. And one of the things that I said yes to was doing my own podcast. I had been listening to a podcast that was actually meant for crafters. And I say this very respectfully, I’m really not a crafter.

William Hanke (03:58)
Sure.

Ceil (03:59)
I

need to make something that has a purpose. I mean, I knit and I do some other things, but I never really saw myself as a crafter and I don’t, can’t tell you why I used to listen to this podcast, except that the woman who did it did such a brilliant job of asking questions. Her name is Abby Glassenberg. And I kept listening to it and thinking, oh, somebody in our industry should do this.

William Hanke (04:10)
you

Ceil (04:24)
somebody in our industry should do this. And then one day I figured like, well, I’m somebody and I can go to YouTube and figure out how to run, you know, do a podcast. I had no idea what I had gotten myself into. As you well know, there was a whole lot more to it. But I said yes to it. I started to do it. And then when Janelle Deck, who was a previous owner of the Curtains and Soft Furnishings Resource Library was

William Hanke (04:38)
Sure.

Ceil (04:52)
realizing it no longer connected to what she was trying to build. She and I sat down and talked about it and actually the anniversary is coming up very soon. On January 17th of 2017, we signed the papers and I took over running the Curtains and Soft Furnishings Resource Library.

William Hanke (05:12)
Wow.

Wow.

Ceil (05:14)
So again, I said yes, but I didn’t quite know everything I was getting myself into. But I had been a member of the library and I understood what having a place to go to and look for information, but also having a community. At that point, Facebook groups were becoming very popular, but sometimes I’d look and there’d be like 3000 members on a Facebook group.

And I had no way of knowing whether they were professionals or whether the questions that were being answered were the best way to do things or the most recognized.

right way. I know there’s no one right way to do everything, but I would get too many answers for things. Inside the library, it’s a smaller group. It is professionals. It’s people who have been helping other people for years. We have some people who are retired from the business and still continue to come into the library and answer questions and help people. So I loved what the library stood for and it was a great ⁓

William Hanke (06:12)
Love you.

Yeah.

Ceil (06:18)
It was a great combination of the podcast and the library. I did not realize that I would have so little time and I started to cut back on the fabrication.

So in the past maybe two or three years, I’ve cut back to maybe just one or two clients that I work with. And that’s more to keep myself in the workroom once in a while than anything else. So the focus now is on running the library, doing the podcast. And part of the library is also a digital digest, which is a magazine geared towards workrooms.

William Hanke (06:45)
Yeah.

⁓ that’s awesome. You’ve basically you mentioned score earlier on. You’ve basically built a version of score specifically for this industry, right?

Ceil (06:57)
Thank

You know, I hadn’t thought about that, but yes, based on the fact that so many people within the library are seasoned fabricators and willing to answer questions. the content of the library, Will, it’s grown over the years. Some of it is,

William Hanke (07:08)
Yeah.

Ceil (07:26)
Recorded webinars from the old custom home furnishings Academy some of it is courses that people put together sold for a little while and then realized that the content was important but not as Up to date so they would donate it to the library and also have a great working relationship with the workroom channel

and a lot of our industry teachers record courses on there. So yeah, yeah, you’re right. I had not thought about that, but it is kind of like score for window treatment fabricators.

William Hanke (07:59)
Yeah,

yeah. And for listeners that aren’t familiar with score, we’ll put a link in the show notes for sure, because I used score when I first got started. What an amazing organization to really, you I love to hear success stories like yours, where you had a mentor that helped you just, you know, just explain that, yes, this can be a thing. And this is the way to get there.

Ceil (08:08)
Okay.

And what I loved about ScoreWill was that it was people with, at one point I had one mentor and then for a little while I was meeting with two or three people. During the pandemic, we were only meeting on Zoom. So ⁓ like three of them would jump on and they would give me different perspectives from their industries. So it was just, and just really helped me keep on task about running the business end of things.

William Hanke (08:43)
Yeah.

Ceil (08:50)
not just being creative and this is pretty, I want to make this. I really had to focus on that part of it too.

William Hanke (08:51)
Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Creative brains have a hard time doing the actual working on the business stuff. It’s like an unfortunate evil in order to eat at the end of the day. You have to do these things, right? That’s awesome. Well, let’s dive in and talk a little bit more about the resource library. I want to hear more about this.

Ceil (09:03)
Yes, we do.

Yeah.

Yes.

William Hanke (09:21)
Give us an overview of what it is and who really is it for specifically.

Ceil (09:26)
Okay, it’s geared mostly towards workroom owners. And that can be the single person workroom, it could be the person who has a part timer, and it could even be a workroom owner who’s hands off from the fabrication standpoint, but that he or she has to bring in and train employees. So it consists of videos that were from the now defunct Custom Home Furnishings Academy.

how to operate a straight stitch machine, how to clean a straight stitch machine, how to make single width panels. So there’s step-by-step videos. There are years worth of magazines that were put out in the past.

started with a black and white printed newsletter that was done by Cheryl Strickland, who is a name that a lot of people who have been around for a while know. So there’s step-by-step articles. Then there are the drapery and design webinars, which again, there are some things in our industry just like a lot of our machines. I have a straight stitch machine that’s probably 100 years old.

It’s still working. It’s a workhorse. I don’t need an updated machine. Would I love one? Sure, but I don’t need one. Some of the information that’s in the library is like that. There’s a video on how to make a box pleat valance. It’s got older looking fabric, but the method hasn’t changed at all. in that sense, it’s really valuable. And it also cuts down on the expense of updating some things. We haven’t changed how we do a lot of things.

William Hanke (10:36)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sure. Yeah.

Ceil (11:04)
hear the step-by-steps. We have webinars on how to deal with sheer fabrics, how to deal with oversized projects when your table is 10 feet by five feet.

how do you get something on there that’s even larger? How do you manage fabric for a seven width panel when your tables is wide as one width? It’s things like that. And then over the years we’ve added, there is a course on how to start a business by Michelle Williams. There are some upholstery information classes. We had several people who, we have several people in our industry who do a little bit of both. They make window treatments and they do some small upholstery projects.

William Hanke (11:32)
great.

Ceil (11:44)
foam do I use? Here’s a webinar on foam and what the differences are. So it’s, there is so much information in there that sometimes when people reach out to me and say, is this in the library? I have to go, let me think about that for a minute. I know it’s in there somewhere. Now over the years I’ve collected, so it’s easy for me to find, but inevitably there are some things I forget are even in there. So

William Hanke (11:48)
That’s awesome.

Ceil (12:10)
My job as the librarian is to help people find things and to remind people of everything that’s in there. We also have a community inside there and it’s called the forum and people can come in and ask questions. And again, it’s moderated by me and it’s my full-time job, unlike the Facebook groups. And since 2017, I have had to ask one person to be a little bit more respectful.

No snarky answers, there’s no unkindness. And people will come in and say, this awful thing happened to me today. And seven people will jump on and go, crap, I feel your pain. Here’s what I did when it happened to me. Or there’s nothing I can do to help you, but I’m here for you. And that sense of community that doesn’t have 3,000 people attached to it, I think is just nicer and.

William Hanke (12:53)
Yeah.

Ceil (13:02)
It’s just a nicer version of Facebook and a calmer version. And I see people, I don’t have to be the one to answer all the questions. I will see a question pop up and before I can even go on somebody saying, ⁓ here’s a link to this article. here’s, ⁓ this is the product I’m using. And everything within the forum is searchable. So if you’re ready to ask a question, you can always go in and search it first.

If no one has answered that question, then you jump in and you ask the question.

William Hanke (13:33)
Yeah, that’s priceless when you can have a community of like-minded folks, especially ones that just want to be helpful and they’re not worried about being competitors. I think that is absolutely fantastic.

Ceil (13:42)
Yes.

Exactly.

Well, we’re geographically diversified, although people will connect with people who are close by to them. But we’re really not in competition with one another. There’s more than enough work out there for all of us. And there are enough people who are part of the library that believe that

By helping other people, we elevate the industry and we make it a better place for everyone who’s in it. And we also make the output even better for our clients.

William Hanke (14:17)
Great.

Yeah, yeah. We’ve got a lot of clients that have work rooms. So they’re dealers, but they also have work rooms. I can see this being a fantastic resource to give to your employees and maybe even say, hey, spend an hour or two a week in here as part of your training to help those employees get even better.

Ceil (14:39)
Right.

And I think also, Will, the reason that I talk to workroom owners is if they don’t have a training schedule in place, they literally can sit somebody down in front of the how to make window panels, draperies, let them watch it, and then have someone take them to the table and say, OK, here’s how we do this here. But then it’s not a completely foreign idea.

And I just, think it’s a valuable resource. It’s also, we do custom window treatments. If you’re a small workroom, you rarely do the same thing over and over again. And so to be able to go back, or if you have one employee, just to go back and, all right, just refresh my memory on this. How do I do this? I think that’s really a valuable resource for people.

William Hanke (15:24)
Yeah.

Yeah, I’m a huge fan of the Pareto principle, the 80-20 rule. If you can give somebody something that’ll get them 80 % of the way done very quickly, and then you just solve that last 20, absolutely fantastic.

Ceil (15:37)
Yes. Yes.

Yeah. I think that’s a good analogy. I like that.

William Hanke (15:44)
Yeah, yeah. So when people log in to the library, do they typically use the search feature? Are there predetermined courses, folders? How does that piece work?

Ceil (15:59)
So search is a big part of what people go in and do, but the way we have the library laid out is each of the three levels of membership are listed with what you have access to. So it’s overall, like here’s where all the magazines are, here’s where the older webinars are.

for the ProPlus, which is the highest level of the membership. There’s a drop-down menu. Here’s everything that I have access to. One of the things that we do is a monthly webinar called Circle Time. And we have all kinds of different ⁓ types of webinars. They’re business related. They’re fabrication related. They will do technology, anything that assists.

our workroom and a lot of the people who are doing those webinars for me are people within the library community, educators within our industry. I know you interviewed Susan Woodcock. She’s done webinars for me. She and I collaborate on a second podcast and a lot of the people who teach at the custom workroom conference also do webinars and they stay recorded inside the library. So people have access to them all the time. So it’s not quite a roadmap on the front

page, but it’s a list of everything that people have access to.

William Hanke (17:19)
That’s awesome. ⁓ What makes this one different from some of the other industry groups that are online?

Ceil (17:26)
I think it’s more the sense of community and not being afraid to ask a question that reveals that you don’t know something. Even people who been in this business for a very long time have not made everything there is to make. And sometimes people will ask a question on Facebook. It’s like, what’s the best window treatment for this window? And…

Sometimes it’s not that simple. There are some other questions you need to ask first. incidentally, one of the women who always used to start that answer with a question, what does your client need, is a woman who wrote a great course called the Learn to Choose Window Coverings course, which I ended up buying from her. It’s standalone, it’s different from the library, but it’s…

William Hanke (18:13)
nice.

Ceil (18:16)
how do I reach my clients? How do I tell them what they need for their windows? And she does it in such a logical step-by-step way. And she was getting ready to retire. And I was like, this is really valuable information. This should not go anywhere. So ⁓ again, I said yes to something ⁓ and added it to my umbrella. it’s that willingness to help and answer questions is what makes the library stand out.

William Hanke (18:44)
Love that. The community is awesome. Any moments from the community that really help someone stand out?

Ceil (18:52)
I think I see a few things on a day to day basis where someone is just frustrated they can’t find something.

You know how much content is out there now. Well, you could go to five different places and get five different answers and AI is great, but it doesn’t have everything we need and Someone will say I don’t know where to find this and within you know 15 minutes five people have come on and said here’s who I buy it from or here’s a great resource for it

William Hanke (19:06)
Sure.

Ceil (19:23)
⁓ Susan and I have been running a workroom accountability and mentoring group that we hold within the library and then people also go to the custom workroom conference. And one of our mentees recently left her job to start this full time. And she was able to first announce it in our private forum and then have her other mentees come on and say, yes, you’ve got this, we’re here to support you. So those are really great moments when you

see that where someone is has been supported enough that they know they can take the next step and that there’s somebody there to help them.

William Hanke (20:02)
Yeah, feels good, doesn’t it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that. ⁓ What ⁓ you mentioned, the straight stitch machine content is pretty old. ⁓ What other kind of content do you have in there that even though maybe it’s pretty old, it still resonates?

Ceil (20:05)
Yeah, it really does.

Well, I think all of the machine videos are helpful. My very first industrial machine was literally given to me for free. And I had no idea how to actually run it. Neither did the woman who gave it to me. And…

if I had had someone show me, I would have saved myself a lot of trouble. And now somebody can sit down and watch and go, okay, that’s how it’s different from my home machine. I can see where I have to add the oil. can see, you know, an industrial machine is much faster. ⁓ And it’s a workhorse. So that’s on there.

I probably am not doing myself any favors by referring to it as older content. just, it doesn’t need to be updated. It’s there. It’s there for you to look at and learn from. ⁓ So we’ve got videos, we’ve got step-by-steps.

And it was so well written in the first place that it just takes people through. And I love that if you have a different learning style, if a step-by-step written instructions don’t work for you, there are videos for most of the things that we have on the library. And a lot of them are broken down into small chunks. So it’s not a three-hour video that you have to watch.

William Hanke (21:40)
Yeah, that’s great that you have the different learning styles. Not everybody resonates with one, so having the different ways is great. What formats are the most popular today? Video, step-by-step guides, webinar.

Ceil (21:45)
Yeah.

I think

that it’s interesting. think the videos are, ⁓ you know, I can track who goes on and watches things. Sometimes this is your most watched video of the week. I’m like, really? That’s the one. I’ve also started to get people to start sending me videos of how they’re doing things that I include in the digest and then we store on the library. And again, that’s, those are the things that people look at. They’re

There are solutions that people find in their own workroom and think, I need to share this with people so they can try it. you know, again, well, they’re not highly edited or perfectly lit videos. They’re here. I am in my workroom. Here’s what I figured out. I’d like to share it with you. And I’ll have like.

50, 60 people watch it in a week and think, great, now people are learning from that. So yes, I think videos are the most, but when I share…

I can take the old magazines and pull out like one section of it that has step-by-steps for how to add a flange on a pillow. And I’ll include that in the digest and people will download that PDF so that they have access to it when they need to make it. So I’d say it’s probably a tie between the two. Video is first maybe and then step-by-step. We are really…

hungry for step-by-steps in my part of the industry.

William Hanke (23:23)
Yeah, yeah. I think most people are visual learners, probably why YouTube’s the number two search engine, right? I have a bumper sticker on my car that says ⁓ YouTube mechanic, right? Because I just go there and figure out how to do the wrench thing, right? So video’s fantastic. But at some point, we do need like, OK,

Ceil (23:27)
Mm-hmm.

You

Yes!

William Hanke (23:47)
I need to get into the details of how this works and having that as an option. Again, great. ⁓ Different levels of searching, right? Once I found what I want, then I need to dig down to get the step-by-step to get that done. So great that you offer both of those. What do you think surprises people the most when they first join?

Ceil (23:50)
Yes.

Right.

I think the volume of information that’s available to them. I think that people don’t realize how much content has been collected with Inside the Library.

William Hanke (24:18)
Wow, that’s good. That’s good problem to have, right? All right. I want to talk a little bit about younger, newer pros that are entering into the trade. Yeah. So are newer workroom pros entering differently today than they have in the past?

Ceil (24:21)
Yes, yes.

Love this. Love it.

I think very differently.

When I started to interview people who had been doing this for a little while, some were closer in age to me, and a lot of us had a similar story. They were not exact, but it was, have this skill, I’d like to make some extra money. And it took some of us a very long time to value those skills and to charge appropriately for them.

William Hanke (25:09)
Sure. Yeah.

Ceil (25:10)
Some

of the newer younger people that I’ve interviewed are like, listen, I was making six figures in my old job. If I’m not going to make money at this, what’s the point of doing it? It would be like, Whoa, okay. Yes, you’re right. But how did you learn that? And please share it with more of us. I definitely saw determination and the younger and newer people and I use those terms together because for a lot of people, it’s a second career.

William Hanke (25:18)
No.

Ceil (25:40)
but they’re not 75 making it ⁓ a second career, although we have a few of those people.

they’ve been through enough that they know if they’re going to commit to this, they want to make sure they’re successful at it. But they a lot of people also choose it because they can make it balance with the current circumstances of their life. They can be as busy as they want to be, or they can cut back and work fewer hours. So I feel like the most important difference was or is with some of the newer younger people is that they value their skills more than some of us did.

25 years ago.

William Hanke (26:19)
Yeah. So instead of, ⁓ this could be a thing. It’s more like I can make this a thing. Right. Yeah, that’s awesome. And they come in a lot more educated right off the bat. They kind of have a good maybe 10,000 foot view of what’s going on and what’s going to happen before they even commit.

Ceil (26:25)
Yes, yes, that’s exactly right.

Yes. A lot of us didn’t even know we were workrooms, Will. That’s the difference between my generation of workrooms and the newer ones. And that was one of the things people said to me when I started the podcast was, I didn’t know I was a workroom until you told me that. And the newer, younger people coming in are…

William Hanke (26:42)
That’s great. love that.

Ceil (27:03)
They know they are a workroom and they know they have skills and they know they bring value to their clients, whether they’re interior designers or retail clients.

William Hanke (27:14)
Yeah, when they come in like that, what do they need the most to get started?

Ceil (27:22)
You know, it’s interesting, Will because I love technology, but what we do, you really can do with your hands and a needle and thread. I mean, the machines make things happen faster, but we can do everything by hand. I think the most important thing for someone who wants to be fabricating is a table, a gridded, padded table that allows you to work at the right height.

because there is nothing worse than stooping over your dining room table and then having to clear it off so that people can eat at it. We’re getting down on the floor and cutting out material. And a lot of us started out that way. So I think a work table is really important, a dedicated space that you don’t have to put things away. And yet if you don’t have those things, I don’t think it should stop you from getting started. I think that the third thing is community.

is knowing that there are people out there who can direct you where you need to go and answer your questions.

William Hanke (28:25)
Yeah. How has the learning path changed over the years?

Ceil (28:32)
Well, one of the questions I ask on the podcast is how did you learn to sew? And I would say for 90 % of the people, it was either a grandmother or an aunt or a mother, or it was school. They don’t really teach home economics anymore, but for a lot of people, that was the answer.

And the first time someone said to me they learned to sew on YouTube, like just was like, you’ve got to be kidding me. But it makes sense, as you said, it’s the second largest search engine. So one of the challenges that workroom owners who are not fabricating have is when they hire someone, they don’t want to hire someone with too many skills because then they have to unlearn some things.

And I think that the learning path for some of the people in our industry is they’ve decided they can make this a thing and then they have to learn to sew to do it. And in the past, it was the exact opposite. I know how to sew, what can I do with this to make some money? So I have seen people start a business in this industry when they did not know how to sew prior to it. And that’s a drastic change from, you know, 20 years ago.

William Hanke (29:37)
Yeah.

That’s really interesting. It’s definitely reversed ⁓ from what you’ve seen in the past. So yeah, has that caused different courses to suddenly be more popular and maybe other ones be less popular, I would assume?

Ceil (29:56)
Yes. Not for everyone. Yeah.

I don’t think it’s the courses so much as the styles that have changed. For many years, we’ve been doing Roman shades and side panels, and those are straight pieces of fabric. ⁓ There’s a lot to learn with a Roman shade and the different types and the head rails and things like that. But when I started, my very first class was an empire swag.

and not too many people are making them, although that’s changing again, swags are starting to come back. So I think that for the people who are learning to sew, they also have to be open to, it’s not just about sewing, it’s manipulating fabric, it’s stapling on a board, it’s all of those things. So I think that’s another part of the path that’s changed.

William Hanke (31:00)
Yeah, yeah.

One of the things you mentioned earlier on was the Learn to Choose Window Coverings course. Tell me a little bit more about that course and who it’s for.

Ceil (31:12)
So I feel like that is best suited for anyone who is going to be fabricating and works with a retail client. It is not about fabrication. It is about how to help your client choose the correct window coverings. it can be ⁓ interior designers can use it, workrooms who are selling to ⁓ retail clients.

But as a to the trade workroom, I also found it incredibly valuable because a lot of my designers were not well-versed in window treatments. And they would have me show up at a client’s home and we’d be measuring for side panels. And I’d ask the question, well, how are they keeping light out of this room? There was no answer to that because that wasn’t part of the design.

And in asking those questions, we were finding really what the client needed. And nine times out of 10, it meant the designer and I were both making more money because we weren’t covering the actual need of the client with pretty fabric. It was, we need a shade and we need pretty fabric. the course is meant to educate people so that when they go to a client’s home, they can

put together information, sell them what they need, and do it quickly with fewer visits. Because time’s money.

William Hanke (32:42)
Yeah. Have you had to update that course over the years or add additional pieces to it?

Ceil (32:49)
Yes, and we are in the process of updating it yet again, especially with AI. There’s a capsule inside. So it’s broken down into nine different segments. And when you buy this course, you own it. It’s not something you have to pay for every year. It’s just you buy it and you have it. There are

two or three different rendering programs that are available for our industry. One is minutes matter, the other is dream draper. And it’s, they’re fabulous because you can import the fabric that you want to use, put it onto, this is what it would look like as a valence. This is what it would look like as a drapery. But now with AI, one of the things you can do is do a rendering of the total room that looks far more realistic than any rendering program can show. So you can put it all together and say, does this

William Hanke (33:36)
Sure.

Ceil (33:38)
look then have AI update it. So Linda Erlem was the creator of this particular course and she is updating it with me. She just doesn’t want to do the marketing and the running of the program but she’s a really great educator and we’re updating some of the language that’s in it. So I think this is a course that can’t be left.

The information is going to change as time goes by. And then anyone who already owns the course will just give them the updated version.

William Hanke (34:06)
that’s great. Okay. Wow. So it’s always up to date. I love that. Yeah, that’s great. What inspired you to include that in kind of your business umbrella?

Ceil (34:10)
Yes, yes.

Well, I did retail for a little while and realized that I was not qualified to be making some of the decisions that interior designers know how to make. I did it, and the older I got, the worse my filter became. And someone would say, oh, I love this orange rug. Let’s make this work in the room. What window treatment fabric can we put with it? And inside my brain would be going, oh, no, that rug’s got to go. I’m not an interior designer.

William Hanke (34:28)
Hahaha

No.

Ceil (34:45)
I have such respect for their ability to look at someone else’s tastes and requirements and create a beautiful environment for that client. I am not that person. I don’t have those skills. I can, however, make whatever beautiful window treatments you’d like to put in that room.

And I looked at this course and again, Linda was always that person answering the question, what do I put on this window with the question of what does your client need? And I thought she is so brilliant. Like that’s the first thing we should be asking. But she broke down how to measure properly, how, you know, everything you need to bring with you. She just did such a great job with it that I felt.

William Hanke (35:21)
Yeah.

Ceil (35:32)
that with the education that was available inside the library, that the two were just a great ⁓ companion piece.

William Hanke (35:41)
That’s great. It sounds really good. You mentioned what should you bring with you? Are there any tools or tactics you think more people should be using now?

Ceil (35:50)
I do. think that it’s taken a little bit of time. think that people need to be more digital. I think they need to walk into a client’s home with a tablet and not a patent paper. If you like writing because tactically and you learn and remember better, then use a note taking app and write it on your tablet. I’m a big fan of the iPad. I’ve taught some iPad courses at the custom workroom conference. But I think that if you are trying

to keep things in a folder and it’s a lot of paper, you’re taking more time than you need to work with your clients. ⁓ I also think that walking in with samples of hardware and samples of fabric that you have preselected for your client, because if you walk in with 50 books,

they’re gonna take a really long time to make a decision. If you’ve narrowed those choices before you ever walk in the door, but you bring things with you, you’re gonna make the sale faster. And I think that…

There’s also a really fabulous webinar inside the library that’s done by someone who had like 25 years of sales experience. And she has her system down to T. She answers phone messages at a certain time. She has a questionnaire that she sends her clients. Those are all of the things I think that make you more effective. And

especially for someone who’s new and your confidence isn’t quite where you want it to be. You take this course, you watch this webinar and you can walk into your third client’s home and it sounds like you know what you’re talking about and you’re comfortable with the information and then you can move forward faster. And again, by not going back to their home two and three times to check on things, by having checklists and doing everything while you’re there the first time.

William Hanke (37:46)
Yeah, the customer doesn’t know that, right? If you can exude that confidence when you show up on your third ever customer visit ⁓ and you got your stuff together, they’re going to be like, wow, this, I mean, this, is the person we need.

Ceil (38:04)
Exactly, exactly. And it’s, I don’t think it’s that hard anymore to be ready sooner with the information that we have available.

William Hanke (38:14)
Along those same lines, if you walk in with a pad of paper and they’ve got another guy that shows up an hour later with a tablet, that speaks to the customer as well, right?

Ceil (38:26)
Yeah, and I think Will that everything isn’t about appearance, but if you look pulled together when you walk in the door, if you are not so worried about forgetting something that you are interacting naturally with the client, whether it’s a designer or…

retail client, those are the things that I think make a difference. And if you’re still using a pad and it’s working for you, you go for it. But when you walk in and you’re not trying to remember, okay, what do I measure first? And what do I do next? And what do I do next? And when you’re new, those are things that are harder to remember. So all those checklists and things on a tablet just makes you know that you’re going to relax, get everything you need.

and you will be able to talk more easily to the client. And you’re right, then the client goes, this is the person I want to work with.

William Hanke (39:20)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. You’ve shared some incredible things. I want to jump into kind of like a bonus round, if that’d be OK with you, and do some a little bit more fun questions. One still somewhat industry related, so we’ll start there. What helps you stay sharp or inspired outside of the window treatment industry?

Ceil (39:27)
Okay.

I, outside of the window treatment industry, I love to learn, Will. I read constantly. I love to research different things on YouTube. And just, I love to learn. So I think that’s probably, and then sometimes I’ll learn something, ⁓ that would be helpful in the industry. So I would say that’s it. My love of reading and learning.

William Hanke (39:58)
Yeah.

Okay.

Do you do fiction, nonfiction? Yes.

Ceil (40:10)
Yes.

Yes to both. read

a lot of business. I read a lot of business books, but I also love to read fiction and I read everything from historical fiction. I’m not a big romance fan. I love Jeffrey Deaver. I love Jonathan Kellerman. My husband laughs because we’ll watch something scary on TV. He says, you read books that are so much worse than what we’re watching, but they’re just words when I’m reading them.

William Hanke (40:38)
Right.

Ceil (40:39)
watching

them on TV. That’s another story. Yeah.

William Hanke (40:41)
Yeah, it’s coming at you, right?

What business books have really affected you lately?

Ceil (40:51)
So I’m actually, it’s really not a business book, but Atomic Habits by James Clear. I’m actually rereading that. I love that book. A book I hate, but I have read three times is The E-Myth Revisited. I hate it for all the reasons that it’s accurate. That you can’t be the technician, the manager, and the entrepreneur and get it all done.

William Hanke (40:56)
great one.

Yeah.

Yes.

Ceil (41:16)
Profit First by Mike McCallewitz. Those are all books that have had an impact on me.

William Hanke (41:23)
those are great.

I’m hearing a lot about atomic habits because I probably read that what three years ago. I don’t know when it came out, but quite a while ago. But suddenly it’s like back on my radar and we’re actually cleaning out our storage room. It’s become a storage room that’s like too much storage and we’re cleaning it out. And I saw the book lay in there the other day. I’m like, I guess somebody’s telling me I need to go ahead and pay attention to this again.

Ceil (41:36)
Yeah.

Yeah.

It’s interesting because I had, you can see a bookshelf behind me and there’s, I’ll admit it, there’s a pile of books on the floor, because I’m trying to clean it out a little bit too. But I had been listening to a podcast and James Clear was a guest.

William Hanke (42:00)
Yeah.

Ceil (42:08)
And I had been talking with someone about my word of the year. And sometimes I do that and sometimes I don’t. And I had chosen a line because I wanted to make sure that I didn’t say yes to things that don’t align with where I want my business to go. And he said something on the podcast that made me change my word of the year. And he talked about having clarity. And of course the joke was his last name is Clear.

William Hanke (42:23)
⁓ that’s great.

Mm-hmm.

Ceil (42:36)
If you’re

not clear on what you want, then you don’t know where you’re going. And I was like, yeah, I can’t use the word align until I’m clear. So I’ve chosen clarity as my word for the year and align will be about like my secondary word. But I just listened to him and I thought it’s time to pull that book back out again and reread it. And I’m not a big rereader. There are too many books.

William Hanke (42:46)
Yeah.

That works.

⁓

yeah.

Ceil (43:05)
for

me to spend time rereading one, even if I loved it. But I absolutely am enjoying taking the time to read it a second time.

William Hanke (43:15)
Okay, all right, you sold me on it. I’m gonna go downstairs and grab it and get it back on the top of my head.

Ceil (43:20)
All right, I’m gonna follow up with you and see if

you read it.

William Hanke (43:24)
Fair enough. What’s a favorite oops moment from your fabricating days?

Ceil (43:32)
I was making a bedspread for someone and I was serging the seams. And if your listeners do not know what a serger is, it cuts and stitches the edge of the fabric and it gives a really nice finish. it not only sews a seam, but then overcasts the edge of the seam.

And the fabric got caught. And I cut the fabric where I shouldn’t have. And I literally had like one of those moments where I ran screaming from my workroom and like, this is gonna cost me a fortune and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. ⁓

And I went back and I really hadn’t caught it at a bad spot. Like, was only an inch or two over and I had allowed myself enough excess that it was not a problem. So I learned a valuable lesson with that one and that was to maybe not overreact to a mistake the way I did. And there’s a woman in our industry who’s been an educator for years, Anne Johnson. She had written an article called Three Strikes and You’re Out.

And that is if you make three mistakes in your workroom, get out of your workroom, go do something else, which you will make a fourth mistake. And that was the fourth mistake of my day that day. So I learned that Anne knew what she was talking about and I had to follow those rules in my workroom. But yeah, I saw that cut in the fabric and I literally had a meltdown.

William Hanke (44:52)
Fair enough. ⁓

Yeah, wow. You mentioned Profit First earlier. I’m a huge Profit First fan. Do you have a secret weapon, maybe not necessarily finance related, but just overall some sort of tool or habit that makes your work smoother?

Ceil (45:31)
That makes my work smooth. That’s a good question.

I would say my secret weapon is investigating ways to be more productive. That is another thing that I truly love. I wear an apron while I’m working. ⁓

William Hanke (45:40)
Okay.

Ceil (45:47)
I have tools hanging around my work table. I have my desk set up so that I can get to things quickly. And I don’t come by those things naturally. I don’t sit here and go, if my pens were here, I learned them from other people. So I think my secret weapon is investigating and saying, there’s got to be a better way to do this. I just don’t know what it is.

William Hanke (46:10)
Yeah, yeah. And you’re running the resource

library, which is pretty awesome to have that sort of personality. And also, the user-generated content you mentioned. Other people can upload pictures of how they solved something. ⁓ I bet that helps tons of people, which is, yeah, that’s awesome. ⁓ As we wrap up, thank you so much for being on today. This has been great.

Ceil (46:27)
Absolutely does.

William Hanke (46:35)
Any final thoughts from someone who’s either new or rebuilding in the workroom space?

Ceil (46:40)
I think, Will, not to beat a point to death, but look for community. One of the things that I always find so fascinating is…

that either someone has listened to my podcast and heard where someone lives and says, ⁓ they live right up the road from me. And I love when I hear this, where people say, I reach out to them, and now we’re workroom buddies and we help each other. ⁓ Susan Woodcock has said that about the Custom Workroom Conference. People will be standing in line to get their badges and they turn and they live a town away from each other. I think that finding people who can help you.

is the most important thing for a small workroom, a solopreneur, this can be a very lonely business.

But being able to connect with other people and find out that the way you are doing it is great and giving you that boost of confidence. Or if you try this this way, you’re going to be done in half the time and you can move on to the next project. If you’re working by yourself, you don’t have that opportunity. But reaching out to other people and connecting with them allows you to build confidence in yourself and your skills. And I think it’s invaluable.

William Hanke (47:56)
That’s awesome, yeah. Where can people learn more about the resource library and connect with you?

Ceil (48:03)
Well, I’m on social media. The library is CSFRL.org and I have an Instagram account for the library and the So Much More podcast has a Facebook page so I can connect with people there.

William Hanke (48:16)
Perfect. We’ll also put all the links in the show notes, of course, so that people can check it out and get in touch with you if they have other questions. So thank you again. I know I keep saying it, but I really do appreciate you being on this show. Anything else you’d like to share before we finish up?

Ceil (48:21)
Awesome.

No, well, this has been a pleasure for me. I said this before we started to record. I’m not used to being on this side of the microphone, so this was a little bit fun for me. A little nerve wracking, but you made it great. So thank you. I appreciate it.

William Hanke (48:44)
good. That’s fantastic.

Well, thank you. So that’s a wrap for today’s episode of Marketing Panes. Huge thanks to Ciel DiGuglielmo I didn’t butcher it. That’s good. For giving us a peek behind the curtains, literally, and showing us how the right resource at the right time can change a career. Whether you’re new to fabricating or 20 years in, there’s always more to learn.

Ceil (48:55)
No, you did not.

William Hanke (49:11)
And it’s leaders like Ceil who make that journey easier, smarter, and a lot more supported. If this conversation sparked a new idea or gave you a resource to explore, share it with a fellow pro and be sure to follow us on all the usual channels. Thank you for listening and have an awesome day.