How+to+sub+contract+services+to+other+interior+designers

Dear Dakota,
I am rebranding and restarting my practice. I have 15 years commercial and 15 years residential experience. I am promoting a modern european aesthetic. not quite caught on in my area.
In the meantime, I am teaming up/offering "as needed" services to fellow colleagues. This often means ghost-designing a project for another designer. Design services for $85/hour or admin ie. proposals and concept boards for $35/hour.
However, in some cases, the designer is not tight on their process and it has made proposing a flat fee for my participation difficult. I am seeing a lot of shifts in scope. This has made it difficult to establish a starting deposit and billing process to ensure I have a stream of income.
Ugggghhhhh! How do I wrangle fellow designers and manage consistent billing to them?

Katie’s response:

I applaud your flexible approach to finding income-generating work when your pipeline is empty. And, yes. Collaboration with another designer can certainly be difficult, but I have a few words of advice for you.

First, your rate is not less than depending on the activity you perform or the deliverable you provide. The expertise you bring has a certain value. I recommend arriving at one hourly rate for subcontracting your services to other designers and stick with that. Perhaps $60 per hour is a good concession between your two previous rates. If you agree, make $60 your rate for all subcontracting work.

→ Side note: With 30 years of experience, $85 and $35/hour are entirely too low all. I know that’s not the question you’re asking but I did want to note that.

This will make it easier for another designer to contract your services and less likely you will perform one service while being paid for a less valuable task (I know there is much task switching throughout the day for interior designers). By having ONE rate for all work completed for each designer, you’ll be able to deliver your highest-quality work to your designer clients for the best price.

Second, as a subcontracted service provider, it will be extremely difficult for you to get your interior designer client to streamline their process to make your life easier.

And anyone who knows my company or has gone through my signature program, The Designed to Scale® Method, KNOWS that with sound processes in place, an interior design business owner can avoid client confusion, business delays, time-consuming re-invention of the wheel each and every time something is executed, and a whole lot of frustration along the way!

HAVING STREAMLINED PROCESSES IN PLACE IS EVERYTHING IN YOUR BUSINESS!

But, as a collaborator and subcontractor providing services to another interior design professional, it is not possible to intercede in ways that will make this other designers’ processes more efficient. That’s on that business owner.

But here’s what you CAN do:

Focus on YOUR process and how YOU can best support your interior designer clients.

Establish a thorough, step-by-step process for receiving and accepting work requests from other designers. This process will likely be similar to the one you follow when you work with your interior design clients on their homes.

It may look something like this:

An inquiry process - how your designer clients can submit work requests, what should be included in the work requests, what your current lead times are for certain project types, etc.
A proposal process - once you’ve reviewed the request, let them know the process for estimating hours and availability, do you send them a contract, do they pay a retainer or pay in full, etc.
An onboarding process - once the work has been accepted and acknowledged by you (and maybe contract or fee have been remitted), what information do you need from the designer BEFORE YOU CAN EVEN SCHEDULE THIS PROJECT INTO YOUR PIPELINE. Then, also think, do you need to have a meeting with the designer to review the project, or can you get to work based on whatever they submit to you via your onboarding process?
A delivery process - once a project is locked into your pipeline, you’ll likely assign a project timeline based on YOUR project timelines. If there is a rush, then a rush fee would apply. You’ll complete the scope and then “present” to the client for review. Maybe you do a Loom review, maybe you do a phone call, maybe you just send everything in email.
A revision process - what is your revision process? Once the designer client has the deliverable, do you offer a period of time where they can request changes? If so, how long is that? How should they submit change requests? How long is your turnaround time to make changes?
A final delivery process - once revisions are complete, what does the designer client “get” from you? A design board in Canva? CAD files? A shopping list? A spec book? What final files are you providing to them to “complete” the scope.
Payment process - before even accepting a project, you'll want the payment process to be clearly outlined. Are you paid in full in advance? Are you billing 50% up front and 50% and delivery? Are you billing after the project is complete? You said you bill flat fee so I would hope you are collecting payment in full, up front, prior to beginning each job.

You will determine your requirements—whatever they may be—to put yourself in the best position to complete the subcontracted service along with your other responsibilities (your own design clients, other interior designer clients, etc.).

Most importantly, you will let your designer clients know you will not schedule a project until you have X, Y, and Z in hand.

Third, I would NOT bill new clients at a flat fee until you have worked with them a few times and know the process will be streamlined and efficient. Otherwise, if you are billing flat fee for business-to-business clients who have inefficient or non-existent processes and you are letting THEM dictate the timeline and how things will go, I would bet you are making far less than the hourly rates you shared when it’s all said and done.

Flat fee ONLY works when you have a well-defined scope with clear timelines and a formalized process.

Without those three things in place, I have not seen flat fee billing to be profitable, unless you are charging an extraordinary price (like hundreds of thousands of dollars for a few rooms just for design fees).

So, in short:

Determine ONE hourly rate for your services.
Define your process for working with your clients (interior designers) and establish well-defined scopes, clear timelines, and a step-by-step process for working with you.
Do not charge flat fee until #2 is complete, and consider only offering flat fee to select, repeat business-to-business clients.

If you’d prefer to concentrate on working with your interior design clients rather than supporting other interior designers, read this blog post to learn how to fill your own pipeline with ideal clients and projects.