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Music. Welcome to design for the creative mind, a podcast for interior designers and creative entrepreneurs to run their business with purpose, efficiency and passion, because while every design is different, the process should remain the same.Prepare yourself for some good conversations with amazing guests, a dash of Jesus and a touch of the Woo, woo, and probably a swear word or two.If you're ready to stop trading your time for money and enjoy your interior design business, you are in the right place. I'm your host. Michelle Lynn, you music, hello, hello.
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Welcome back to the design for the creative mind podcast. For those of you who might be new around here, our focus is on the business of interior design. This is like an industry I had never imagined when I first got into business. So my name is Michelle Lynn. I am the owner, president of ml interiors group in the Dallas Fort Worth area. And today we are going to be talking about from the design concept to completion. I'm going to share with you a little bit about what I teach in the my signature program, the interior design business bakery, and how we operate at ml interiors group. This might be a podcast you want to grab a pencil and paper for, but the goal today is going to be talking about, oh, every project is different, but the process should be the same. As a reminder, we serve professionals. Our clients are professionals, so they want to hire a professional. When I first got into this industry, I was flailing. I didn't know what went first. Do I get a bid from a contractor before I come up with the final design? Can they even afford it? How do I present my fees? Like all the things, I was all over the place.
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So if you're all over the place with your design business, you're in the right place. Today with the podcast, we have what we call the 16 steps of sanity. That's what we call it internally externally. We call it the ML experience. In these 16 steps, there's sub steps to the steps and sub steps to the sub steps. The intention is that nothing gets overlooked. If you are a solopreneur, this is a great practice for you to ensure that you stay on point and things don't get forgotten. If you have a team, this is a great way to stay on point and make sure things aren't forgotten. Everything that you do that works well should be written down. I actually hand the 16 steps to our clients and share with them. This is how our projects roll. It's proprietary information.
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So now I'm not going to give it all to you today for free, but it is proprietary information that I'm happy to give you enough to be dangerous, and if you are interested in more, yes, this is a gratuitous plug for the interior design business bakery. Let's start by saying that every project has four phases. You have the research phase, the development phase, the procurement phase and the installation phase. Research is a combination of sales as well as once the contract is signed, researching the client's preferences. I always say that the job is yours to lose up until they sign the contract. So we do not give them any concepts or ideas, per se, until we really have done our research and know who this client is. Because, in my opinion, if you're giving them concept ideas, or if you're trying to explain to them that you understand what they're looking for before you get to know them, it's very possible that they're not going to be interested in pursuing because you didn't know what they were interested in, or you didn't know what they liked, because really they didn't know what They liked until you pull it out of them. In the research phase. If any of you have attended my rolling in the dough workshop, you are familiar with a good portion of this research phase. We will be having another rolling in the dough workshop, I believe, in December of this year, which is 2024 depending on when you're listening to.
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It. So keep your eyes open for that. The first step in our process is what we call the qualifying call. We call the qualifying call internally, externally. So if you went to ml interiorsgroup.com I believe it probably says discovery call. So externally, I call it a discovery call, because that's what people are familiar with internally. I call it a qualifying call, and the reason for that is because not everybody's qualified to work with us. Therefore I want to spend as little time confirming that they are or are not qualified to work with us as possible. I don't want to spend 45 minutes to an hour with the client only to find out that they have an unreasonable deadline or unreasonable budget. Therefore, the first call is 15 minutes. What's your budget and what's your timeline? That point, if they have a reasonable budget for the project they have in mind, and they have a reasonable timeline. What we do is we set up what we call a virtual meet and greet. Now we also do meet our clients in person, because we have our studio conference room. Virtual is just fine. Everybody gets used to zoom and we're good to go. But I do encourage you, if you have a place to meet them and meet them in person, the virtual meet and greet is where we go over more of the details that we would normally go over in that first phone call, but we also explain to them how we work.
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This is where I share our 16 steps and how we present our designs and so forth. The next step is going to be an initial visit where we go to the project site. This is where we grab the details that we need in order to create a scope of work and our pricing. We present our scope of work and walk our clients through it and get a contract signature. This is also where we get a receipt of the design payment. We generally take 50% upfront, but depending on the size of the project, it can vary with the payment schedule. Again, today's content is very surface level. There's a lot of that you drill down into these steps, but this is from concept to completion, all the way through the project. If we were to drill down into this, y'all, we'd be here for a week or 10 days or a month.
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There's a whole lot that goes into this. The second phase is development. The second phase is where we kick off the project. So the development is going to be a con, a continuation of some of the research. So internally, what we're doing is we're kicking the project off, we're pulling all of the ideas together, and we're starting to flush them out. We have ongoing client meetings, interviews, finding out details from them and everything from literally, who sleeps on what side of the bed? What sort of storage is needed? What sort of lighting is needed? Do you want your dishwasher on the left side or the right side of your sink? How much storage do you need in your kitchen? Or do you take naps on the couch. Do you need pillows that are soft enough to sleep on? Or do you go get the pillow from your bed and sleep on the like all of these types of things? So there's a lot of detail that goes into a good design. In the past, we used to pull the whole HGTV thing. We would gather as much information as we could.
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We would disappear for a short period of time and come back with the design that needed a lot of revisions. Instead of that, we just take a little bit longer and we talk to the client a little bit more. And quite frankly, y'all, I don't know what I was thinking. I used to think it would bother the client for us to be asking all these questions. Was that what I was thinking? I have no idea, ignorance is bliss, right? However, I highly recommend you spend plenty of time asking your clients questions. From there you're going to have, you're developing the design, and you need to schedule a trade day. This is where you meet with contractors.
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This is where you get on site measurements from your work room. Do you need a couple of trade days? It just depends on the size of the project. But if you can consolidate it into a half a day, a full day, and just have all of your people there that you can it makes it so much easier, because then you have it out of the way, and you're not driving back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth to the project site, because if you are charging a flat fee like we do, going back and forth to the project site is just a waste of time. Time is money. So consolidating your visits is what I would definitely recommend.
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Content. We are also executing floor plans, elevations, sourcing fabrics, furnishings and finishes. This is all going on in the background, and this is where the development of the design is happening. Once we have pulled everything together, we've had plenty of interviews, lots of client meetings in between, which is a completely different, a different set of steps. Then we present the design, personally, we include the estimated budget, and we've already developed the timeline. We let's talk a little bit about budget. For us, what we do is, when we have the scope of work prepared and presented and we're signing the contract, we have a we have the estimated budget at that point. Once we get the contract signed, we drill down into that budget in more detail. And then when we present the furnishings, when we present the design, we have that final budget. I say final because there's still time for revisions. Not every designer does that, so I'm not saying that this is the only way I know. Some designers who present the design saying, Yes, we're in budget. If all of this is proved, we'll pull the final pricing. So I suppose that works too. Just depends on how you want to run your business.
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Imagine trying to bake a cake without a recipe. You kind of know what the ingredients are, but you don't know how to put it all together.
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After lots of hard work and trying different combinations, all you are left with is a sticky situation and a stomach ache. Babe running an interior design business can feel exactly that same way. That is why I created the interior design business bakery. This is a program that teaches you how to bake your interior design business cake and eat it too.
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If you don't want to figure out the hard way and you want guidance to follow a recipe that has already been vetted, someone that has already been there and done it and will help you do it too. Then check out the year long mentorship and coaching program the interior design business bakery.
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If your interior design business revenue is below 300,000
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or if you're struggling to make a profit and keep your sanity. This is the only program for you. You can find that information at designed for the creative mind.com.
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Forward slash, business, dash, bakery, check it out. You won't regret it. You
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so once we've done the revisions and everything has been approved, or even if there's just a few revisions outstanding, but the majority of stuff has been approved, then we start the procurement phase. This is where we're placing the orders. We are confirming the lead times. This is often when construction and renovation begins and the procurement period continues, as we receive orders and project site visits also continue. So basically all the fun stuff is done. Basically all of the fun stuff is done. You're just waiting for stuff to come in. You're handling any issues that might have arisen, like something's damaged or it shows up wrong, or, oh, shoot, it got back ordered in the middle of the process, anything along that line. Then the furniture starts arriving. We go ahead and install it. We've got the client reveal. We oftentimes find that with some of our larger projects, things are installed in phases, and the big client reveal it's not every project is HGTV, ooh, ah, this is so beautiful, and tears fall. Sometimes it's just, you know what? We install it and we've got a few more things that we're waiting on.
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But why do you need to pay for storage for another month and a half while we wait on some lighting where we're very practical that way, and our clients like it again. This is not the only way to do it. Then we we finish the accessories after the big stuff has been delivered. I'm not sure if this is the way we're going to keep doing it, a lot of it had to do with personnel at ml interiors group and their ability to see the space as a whole, as I've gone through and I've coached hundreds of interior designers, most designers, inst, most, let me rephrase that, not most designers, a lot of very successful and highly talented designers will install the accessories at the same time as the furniture and be done like just get out of there and move on to the next project. I'm leaning towards pushing my team to doing that and stretching them a little bit and not take.
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As much of the excuses. But hey, if y'all are listening, if y'all are listening to this, that's what's coming down the pipeline. So Anywho. So you complete the accessories, you style it, you stage it, you get your photos taken. And then, of course, there's the punch list and deficiency resolution y'all. This is the step 16 of the 16 steps of sanity. And let me just tell you, do not, please do not skimp on this. It's imperative that you show up and you finish any deficiencies that were found with the project. Maybe it's something that showed up wrong, maybe it's something that showed up broken, or maybe it is something that just doesn't work the way you and the client anticipated it to our reputations are made or broken at the end of the project, everything could have been beautiful and fabulous up until the last part, and then you just leave it unfinished or unfixed or whatever, and that's where you're going to leave a bad taste in the client's mouth.
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However, this is the hardest thing to do as a business owner, as a creative because the sexy part of the job is way, way over, and you've already got some new interests. You have new designs that you're working on, and the last thing you want to do is go and whatever it is that's not quite right. And I'm just here to really encourage you to suck it up buttercup and show up and make it right, so that you can wipe your hands and move on. So that in a nutshell, is the concept to completion. Now we want to talk about some follow up as well internally. What you need to add to this 16 steps of sanity as one of the sub steps is to make sure that you are getting a review. Get a review from your clients on the google it adds Google juice to your website, and you're going to be you're going to come up in searches a lot better. And then you can also copy the review, the testimonial, and use it in your social media, use it on your website. Things along that line, so don't skip that part. All right, I think that is concept to completion in what 20 minutes, 25 minutes or less.
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Again, there is a lot more that goes into it. There's sub steps. And sub steps, we keep track of ours in Asana and use it as a checklist. Of course, you could use Trello, you could use Monday, you could use a spreadsheet or a Word doc, whatever works best for you. Just make sure, whatever you do, you write it down and you repeat what works and you tweak what doesn't. If you want to move forward five years ahead in one year, you are welcome to join us, considering the interior design business bakery. But I also want to share with you another option that we have recently created, and it's called the sugar and spice society. It's a private community that provides connection, learning and support so that you can rise in your interior design business and make some dough before investing in the full bakery. It is a membership that's exclusively, exclusively for interior designers. So if you want to build a thriving business based on your passion, you're incredibly talented, but you need a place to ask sales and marketing questions.
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The sugar spy society is more focused on sales and marketing and bringing some clients to you so that you can have that, that buffer to invest in the interior design bakery, interior design business bakery, let me tell you a little bit about what it's about. You have your exclusive community. You can ask real time questions and get responses from practicing interior designers. These are graduates of my interior design business bakery, who are there to pour into the society, members the sugar and spy society. We have two live monthly calls, and it is myself and my team. Topics are relevant to your level in business and real life challenges in the industry. But again, this is focused on sales and marketing. So we're not necessarily talking about pricing, we're not necessarily talking about the process. We're talking about getting people to get to you. So even if you're not implementing the 16 steps of sanity that I just went through exactly as I teach in the interior design business bakery, you're still getting your feet with you're still getting some cash influx so that you can turn around and reinvest in more detail, we also have private podcast episodes, so if you subscribe, you're obviously listening to me here, but the i.
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Private episodes are more detailed, insider lessons, their tips, their updates on our current design product projects. So it gives you that peek behind the curtain to to what my team and I are doing. And it is. It's my team. It's not just you listening to me, you're listening to Debbie, you're listening to Juliana, and we are talking about our experiences and how we've overcome obstacles and different things that we've been doing. We have a micro course. It's called, define your signature style, and it's actually a piece of the interior design business bakery that we give you access to. And there are marketing foundation exercises. There's audio instructions, downloadable worksheets. We also have, if you went through rolling in the dough, we have recorded all of that. That was our workshop, but we have all of that recorded and, I think, a little bit edited, and all of that content is in there as well. And then we have monthly marketing prompts. So if you're not sure what to post or what to be talking about. Monthly marketing prompts are shared with you that will help you craft emails, social posts, blogs and more, so that you can get the word out Anywho. If you're interested in something like this, it's designed just for you. It's at designed for the creativemind.com
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and basically what you do is, when you get there, you just click on the coaching button, scroll down to the society and all of the details there, because this is a very, very financially friendly way to get started with us. So I'd love to see you there. Thank you for being here at the design for the creative mind podcast. And I look forward to seeing you next time. Or I don't see you, you don't see me, but you know what I mean. I look forward to next time, take care.
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Hey, y'all, if you love the show and find it useful, I would really appreciate it if you would share with your friends and followers, and if you like what you're hearing. Want to put a face with a name and get even more business advice, then join me in my Facebook group, the interior designers business, Launchpad. Yeah, I know it's Facebook, but just come on in for the training and then leave without scrolling your feet. It's fun. I promise you'll enjoy it. And finally, I hear it's good for business to get ratings on your podcast, so please drop yours on whatever platform you use to listen to this. We're all about community over competition, so let's work on elevating our industry one designer at a time. See you next time you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
