Jane Ledger is an interior designer specialising in high-end residential interiors. Based in Perth, she also practises in Melbourne, Sydney and beyond.
Jane came to interior design after a career in the corporate sector – first as a lawyer, then on the management team of a large national law firm. “I enjoyed these roles but had a yearning to live a more creative life, working for myself and creating beautiful spaces for others.”
After studying at the International School of Colour & Design in Sydney, Jane turned a long-held passion into a business, Jane Ledger Interiors. “I never realised the skills I picked up in my previous life would be useful in my career as a design creative.
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Hi everyone and thanks for joining us.
Today I’m with Jane Ledger who is one of Australia’s top interior designers.
Thanks Jane for your time and for accepting this interview, which may help others who are thinking of a career change.
1. Can you share a little bit about yourself, your background and how you got started in interior design?
Well it was a slightly unconventional start. I grew up here in Perth and studied at UWA. I studied law and I practiced law for a few years. And it became apparent after those few years that perhaps this career wasn’t for me. Then I did a further diploma in business and master in human resource management. And with those combined qualifications I got into law firm management where I spent most of my career. So it’s been quite a change to now come into interior design.
2. Why did you become a lawyer? Who or what influenced you?
I ask myself that question a lot. Why on earth did I study law? I think it was a combination of circumstances with my upbringing. I was academic at school and with a combination of teachers, parents and myself, and I do take responsibility for my decisions, and those factors influenced me in thinking that law could be a career for me. But I guess in hindsight I probably would have chosen something different to be honest. And you are right in what you said before, every single skill that I have learnt both in law and in the management of law firms has helped me in what I’m doing today. So nothing is ever wasted and I use those skills every single day in ways that I didn’t anticipate that I would. So skills that you acquire are always of value to you in your future job. And that’s what I found with interior design.
3. What caused you to make the career change?
It was life circumstances which cause you to pause and reflex on what you are doing. My situation was slightly different as there was nothing about my job that I hated. And I hear that a lot from people, that I hate my job, I don’t like this and it gets me down, it doesn’t make me happy. I didn’t have those experiences. I really loved what I did, absolutely loved it. I loved being in the law firm environment. I got to engage with a whole group of very talented people. I felt very lucky for the types of people that I came in contact with and what they taught me. I was actually quite happy where I was. But perhaps that in itself was the catalyst. I was just happy where I was and I thought this became almost like an experiment for me Martin because I had been in one particular type of role for a long time. It was more me wondering what else I could do because I am a big believer that you can be more than one thing in life.
We seem to think that we have to be on this journey, there’s a beginning, there’s an end, and departures from that journey are not good, they are things we shouldn’t pursue when in fact we are humans are born with an abundance of skills and who knows where those skills can take us and that’s what I wanted to know. What else can my brain actually do and be good at and enjoy? So to be honest it was a bit of an experiment and I wanted to test myself.
I’ve been in this fairly structured, very corporate kind of environment and what would happen if I turned it on its head and pursued an alternative career? That’s really how I started. I had been in a profession where I had done a number of different roles, so I didn’t stay in the same role the whole time. I started as a lawyer and then went into marketing, human resources, strategy and governance. So the roles that I held covered a lot of areas. Yes I think that’s true that I got to the point where I asked what else is there. And it was that sense of curiosity and wanting to push my own boundaries.
Now that came with time and experience, as a young person I may not have done that. With age and experience I thought what’s to lose? Let’s try and see what happens. I was putting myself on a challenge for myself which may be different to what others may experience. I wanted to know what can my brain do and bring a different kind of value to the world. So I was delivering value in the roles I was doing, so I wanted to know what other kind of value I could deliver, I could offer.
So how did I decide I wanted to do this? It was a journey that I put myself on where I wanted to re-explore, re-evaluate my values and what I stood for as a person and what I wanted to offer the world. And I did that through a lot of reading, journaling, I asked myself some really hard questions. I said to myself don’t be afraid of what comes out, just let it come out, no one is watching, no one is looking, I don’t have to share this with anybody. So it’s just me, myself and I.
I think people are afraid of that and they think what other people will think. They think if I wrote that down that would sound silly, that’s a ridiculous idea. No ideas are ridiculous ever and you don’t need to share them with anybody. It’s always good when you do. So I went on a journey which was very much that and I have a few books and folders in my cupboards here where I wrote down a lot. That’s what worked for me and I like to add that I’m a writer, I love writing and expressing.
Other people may have other ways of doing it; it might be through talking to others. It was though that process that I re-evaluated what I wanted to do and when I look back on that I saw patterns converging and it was values based, what did I want to feel when I did work every day, what did I want to make other people feel when I worked every day, what did I want my working environment to look like, feel like, colours and sounds. I got quite specific on how I wanted it to look and I thought why don’t we amplify this, what would it look like if we recorded it, put music to it, what would it sound like? And these were the sorts of things that I did.
It all sounds a bit airy fairy but it was really helpful to me because when I looked back on this work I could see a common thread come through which was I didn’t want to be in an office anymore, as much as I loved the office environment, I said no I actually want to be outside more. So just a simple thing like I want to be outside, that was quite powerful or I want to be amongst beautiful things. They were quite simple statements.
I also asked myself what you would do if you didn’t have to earn any money. What would you do if you knew you were going to be successful? What would you do if you never had to worry about what other people thought? So a lot of the questions I went through were quite repetitive but that was the whole idea because I wanted to see a pattern emerging and hopefully that would come out with some sort of direction.
I threw the rules out and didn’t think about what other people thought I need to do or say or be. I just found out what I needed to find out. I asked what would a coach say to me, I kind of turned it on myself, I recommend this for anyone starting in business alone and that is to build the inner mentor, so because I don’t have people around me like the big office like I used to do where you could bounce ideas off and talk through scenarios, I’ve developed my inner mentor where I say what would a coach say to me. So I’ve tried to take that role on myself.
I think that people can do this themselves and for those who can’t they can get help from coaches like yourself. When people hear my story they often say oh I couldn’t do that because of this or you were able to do that because of this. I just smile and say well that’s how you may perceive it but I believed it then took an action and I did it and there’s no other way of doing it. There’s no way to get through without having the belief, then you must take an action that is consistent with that belief. And if you come up with excuses then you are only failing yourself, not anybody else.
4. How did you discover your passion for interior design?
Through the process of journaling, the values and where I find that in an actual occupation. There were common themes that came through such as beautiful spaces, beautiful things, helping people, communicating with people, that I could engage with people on a daily basis and I came across a course at the international school of colour and design which helped me in this experiment that I was going through. I enrolled in the course while I was working full time. Once I started the course a completely different world unfolded for me and I realised it was what I wanted to do when I actually couldn’t stop thinking about it and I would stay up all night to do my assignments and what have you, not because I was under pressure, had these deadlines or felt terrible, no I felt that I can’t wait to do this work and so that’s how it was for me.
I remember when I started my course and what you say about the loss of time, I was completely immersed in a particular project, particularly colours, paints and hours would go by and I didn’t realise. That was it. Then I had to figure out if I was good enough at this to make money out of it because that’s the other thing we have to talk about is money. So that worked out as well, I do have some aptitude in this area and that was it, which was the start of the business.
5. Did you build your business while also working at your 9-to-5 job and if so, how did you do it?
Yes I did a lot of things. This is a really important message I think for people who are considering this. When you are making a change like this you will have a plan of all these things which you think should happen. You must take action to do all of those things, but not everything is going to come off. But the wonderful thing about that is that other things that you didn’t anticipate will come off.
So you have to start doing something. I did free gigs when I first started, so I worked for free because I wanted to get my name out there. I started a blog, again playing to my strengths, I love writing, and I really enjoy that process. I asked what skills I can take that I already have to run this business. Okay I will write about it. My blog did attract some attention, unfortunately I don’t pay it the attention it deserves now, but it served its purpose in getting some traction. Some magazines contacted me about my blog. Not in my wildest dreams did I think a magazine would contact me.
Now we touched on this before this topic of curiosity and it was a really important thing to be building my business and be completely open and put aside ideas about that person wouldn’t be interested in me, why would I ring them they wouldn’t want to hear from me, all ideas completely made up by me. Not by that person, that person is not even thinking about me, they don’t even know you. So I spent quite a bit of time, I do have the discipline aspect to me from my previous career, so I set myself a goal to every week 3 contacts, ring 3 people, they need to be the direct like editor of a magazine, nothing like that.
Start really small, start slow, small steps leads to much bigger things. I know people will think we hear that all the time and it’s not true, I can tell is absolutely is true. So you will take a step in one direction, you may not hear anything, nothing will happen, then all of a sudden over here, later, something will come in related to that, those contacts. So it won’t be what you expect, don’t expect to have a complete answer to everything you do. So wait for unexpected things to happen, they are fantastic they happen all the time, but you have to take the action into that space and not be too worried about what might come back to you.
6. What were some of the challenges that you faced along the way of building a business and how did you overcome them?
Starting your own business is incredibly frightening. So I went from a full time career in a very established role where I had an income coming in every month and I walked away from that, I resigned and I just went out cold.
Everybody thought I was crazy at the time, including myself. It’s important to acknowledge that it’s frightening and that’s okay. I did feel that I had the resources to get the work done that I needed to do. There were many challenges along the way, to speak more broadly about one of the main challenges as a small business owner is that I’m doing everything. I’m doing the marketing, admin, doing the client work, getting the client work, that is very time consuming and worrying at times and you can’t do it all, so what I started to do is play to my strengths and outsource where I have weaknesses or gaps. Once you do that, you don’t have to do everything, everything falls into place. In the design industry there are lots of things I can outsource to others.
I don’t outsource much because I’m still that controlling person who wants to do everything. So for the design work I’m very keen on doing that, but there are elements of my business that someone else is better at doing that. Once you say it out load, acknowledge it and approach somebody you’ll realise that this is so great, why didn’t I do this before.
In the early days I had no money to invest so I had to do it myself. So one thing was building my own website, in my mind I thought this was completely crazy, I can’t build a website, I don’t know what to do, then I said yes I do know what to do, there are resources everywhere to help us. So I just started googling website, build website, what’s a widget, what’s this what’s that and I spent days and days and weeks and weeks building my website but I was driven to do it, so I thought you can do this. Once you have the skills to do that you will be able to manage the website yourself and make changes.
7. How did you get your first client?
There is not one action that leads to one outcome, there are many seeds that I planted, similar to what I said before, you don’t know which one is going to crop up and grow and develop into something. One of the things I did was being out in the industry. So if you are interested in a particular industry and you haven’t made the jump yet, show up, be present, talk to people, be curious, ask lots of questions, and always ask more than you talk. I learnt a lot through that. People are very happy when they meet someone who just listens because we all want to talk. Just kept talking to people and meeting people for coffee.
My phone became my friend, when I started the business Instagram was I wouldn’t say in the early stages, it was actually very well developed, but there was an increasing interest in it, in the design world and getting beautiful images out. I actually didn’t have any clients when I started my Instagram account, but what I did was I started pulling together fabrics, colours, finishes I had for clients and I would take photos and put them on my Instagram account. Then slowly I started getting some traction on that, I was growing an audience. It took a lot of time. Instagram now is very different to back then, people buy followers and the like, it’s a changed environment, but it’s still a necessary environment we have to be in.
So my first client came off Instagram and I couldn’t believe I got this email which was quite long saying “dear Jane I’ve been following you on Instagram and I really love what you are doing, I’m building a house, could you please come out and could you be my interior designer”. I nearly fell over. I thought really. Oh yes really because you put in all the work. I don’t believe in flukes and I actually don’t believe in luck either because I think you make everything that comes to you in a work sense. So that’s how I got my first client. Now I’ve got 18,500 followers on Instagram which are real people.
8. What advice would you give to someone that may be thinking of a career change?
You certainly need to allow yourself to dream. It’s a really important part of it. Visualising, dreaming, give yourself that opportunity to do it. Don’t worry about what other people are thinking and then once you have done that start taking some action. That’s my greatest piece of advice.
People often say to me but there is no guarantee that it’s going to work, I say no that’s the whole point of it, there’s no guarantee. I can’t ask you Martin is my business going to work. I can’t ask a friend or a family member is my business really going to work. Only you can answer that question and everything you need is inside you. So if you can decide to let that go and be open to the process and do the work which is a big part of my belief system then I think everybody has a chance to be successful and do something of value that they love.
9. How can people learn more about you, your work or get in contact with you?
I have a website which is https://janeledger.com.au/ where you can see my portfolio, a little bit about my background, some of what we touched on today and Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/janeledgerinteriors/ which is very important in the design and art world where people are looking for imagery and to be inspired by images and also completed projects.
So I’m fairly present on Instagram and my website.
10. Do you have any final words?
That nugget of gold just really go for it, believe in yourself, ask for help and talk to people like yourself or other people who can help you. Don’t get stuck. I think a lot of people get stuck and think I can’t do this because and I always feel, I look at the world as a big playground where there are lots of people with lots of different talents that are complimentary to yours, reach out to someone and ask for help.
One message, particularly for young people which I think is really important is the way the employment market works today its often young people having to approach more older, mature and experienced people, my advice is if you are thinking of asking somebody for something be prepared to give them something back in return, also I get an enormous number of emails from young people wanting work, wanting a coffee, wanting this, wanting that, and that’s terrific, that’s great that they’ve taken the step, put together a resume or portfolio.
I will say though if you pick up the phone and ring me you have a much higher chance of getting to that next step you want quicker. It is very easy today for people to close over your email, but it’s far less likely someone is going to hang up on you. So be brave, pick up the phone.
Well thanks Jane for sharing your story, it’s been very inspiring.
You are a great role model for other people and to me you have demonstrated what is possible.
If you got the drive, the hunger, the motivation, you can become successful, you can make a difference in other people’s lives like you are doing Jane by creating beautiful homes for people to come back to for rest and recharging.
Obviously it’s very important to know what you want to create and that’s why I encourage people as a first step to find their passion and purpose.
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So until next time, take care.
Martin
PS. If you have an interesting career change story and would like to be considered for an interview where you get FREE exposure that will help you grow your business then please email us at: support@martinformato.com
