How to Reduce Overwhelm in Your Interior Design Business
Updated January 2022
If you’re feeling overwhelmed in your interior design business, guess what, you’re not alone! When you’re the business owner, the buck stops with you so it’s understandable to feel overwhelmed when you have the responsibilities of running a business and managing multiple client projects in all different phases. Add kids, family, and personal goals to that and you might feel like someone or something is always taking the backseat.
For my clients, the overwhelming theme among all of them is that they want to “get out of overwhelm”, “stop spinning their wheels”, “focus on their design work instead of managing everything else”. The struggle is real and it is consistent throughout the industry.
While my clients' businesses vary in revenue numbers, company size, pricing models, project types and sizes, and more, there ARE common elements among my successful* million and multi-million dollar clients no matter how different their businesses may look on the outside.
They have teams that allow them to focus on their highest revenue-generating activity: designing and selling designs. Grab everything you need to build your team right here.
They invest in having good information, systems, and consistent processes so they can stay at the top of their game: accountants, attorneys, bookkeepers, consultants (oh, hey!). Read this post for the top processes your business needs and the ONE you need most!!
They invest in professional photography and prioritize photographing their projects.
They are clear on their brand and how they can serve their clients.
They make NO MISTAKES about who they will or won't work with and what they will or won't do for clients and they stick to their processes.
*I have also had million and multi-million dollar clients who were not successful, despite that top-line revenue number.
So if you’re feeling overwhelmed in your business, I'd encourage you to look deeper at each of the above bullets and the areas below:
Services. Client experience. Marketing. Systems. Processes. Team.
These are some of the areas I dig into with my 1:1 clients and can instantly spot deficiencies so I know exactly where my team and I need to focus our work.
Start with your client experience process, but first…
I always say to start with your client experience, and I firmly believe that is the best place to start IF and only IF your services are tight and you’re clear on who your ideal client is. Now, I won’t be walking through some boring ICA exercise because you should have data that gives you that information already. BUT, I would say, before you can really develop an amazing client experience process, you have to have services that your ideal clients are looking for so you can then move forward from there.
For example, if you offer “full service” design and can do anything for anyone at any size, timeframe, or budget, then yeah, it’s going to be hard to create a client experience process around that because the process would need to be so general to encompass all that may happen within each project. But if you offer full-service design where it’s only for projects that have construction/renovations, three rooms or more that need full furnishings, and that you’ll be styling and photographing at the end, then BOOM, now we have a clear structure for that service and can create the pieces needed to take your client through the process of working with you.
Need help troubleshooting your client experience? Grab my free Client Experience Blueprint here to streamline your process from first inquiry to the final goodbye.
How to define your services as an interior designer based on your ideal client
Before you can define your services, you have to think of your ideal client. Not the one you wrote down on paper whose name is Susie and is 32 years old and has blonde hair and shops at Neiman Marcus.
No. Boring. Don’t do that.
Your ideal client is the best parts of the clients you’ve already worked with AND (and I can’t emphasize this enough) AND they are the OPPOSITE of the difficult clients you’ve worked with. Yes, we learn from the good clients but we learn so much more from the bad ones, right?
—> So maybe Susie wanted to email you picture after picture of things she found online after you already started designing her space but that drove you crazy and undermined your expertise. Then your ideal client would “trust the process and let you do all the sourcing”.
—> Let’s say Susie wanted to have a call every other day and wanted to text you pictures of things she found online but that doesn’t fit with your business model. Then your ideal client would likely be “a busy professional who values their time and is comfortable hiring experts”.
You get the idea, right? Then once you have your list of the opposite qualities written down, that will paint a very clear picture of who your ideal client is. Once you have that figured out, then you can dig into your services to make sure they are in line with what your ideal client would want.
So if your ideal client is a busy professional who values their time, wants a unique home, and trusts you and your process, they probably won’t want a two-hour design consultation where you leave them with a list of suggestions and to-do items they can implement on their own. Guess what, they won’t have time for that and it will be a lackluster experience leaving much to be desired. (If this sounds like your clients, definitely check out this post on how to structure a Design Day service—an all-time fave service among my designers!)
Once you have your ideal client and services mapped out…
Once you have those two items sorted out, THEN you can move into structuring your client experience process around each of your services so they are well structured and beneficial to both you, your team, and. your clients.
Think: what are the parameters of each service for design time, revisions, communication, and support? What information will the client need to provide us to make this a successful project? What questions might the client have in the sales process that we can answer ahead of time? What questions might they have now that they’ve invested in the service? What issues might come up that we can let them know about now?
Once your process is nailed down you can see where you can bring in help with either an employee or a software system to take those tasks off your plate. And if you need help creating a streamlined client experience for your clients and your business, check out the done-for-you client experience templates in the Design Library.
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