EP # 35 | How Hiring can Dramatically Improve your Interior Design Business

Welcome to the Designers Oasis podcast. I'm your host, Kate Bendewald, interior designer, mama, and CEO of a thriving interior design business, built on authentic word-of-mouth referrals. It wasn't that long ago that I stepped away from my corporate architecture job to build my own dream, one that would allow me more time with the people that I love, the ability to serve my clients at the highest level and to make a great living. It wasn't always easy, and I've made my share of mistakes along the way. Fast forward to today, and I've learned a thing or two. This podcast is for you - the inspired, creative, ambitious, and let's admit it,  occasionally overwhelmed interior designer who shares this dream of transforming lives by transforming homes. Join me and my guests each week as we walk through practical ways to build an interior design business you love, and help you transform your client's lives. You can do this. 

Hello, there, and welcome back to the Designers Oasis podcast. I am so excited to be hanging out with you again, today, we have a great episode today, it's gonna be a little interactive, which is kind of new, I have an exercise for you to do. So if you are driving, I will obviously give you a variation. Because this does involve writing. I like the idea of putting pen to paper because I think it kind of activates something for us and helps us to get unstuck. But today we are talking about the benefits of hiring for your interior design business. So why is this so important? I feel really passionate that all interior designers should have at the very least one assistant.

So and I'll get into that a little bit more. But here's whenever I talk to the designers inside the designer spaces membership inside our program, there's a couple of things that come up. Often whenever somebody's feeling, maybe the urge or the nudge to hire, but they're feeling stuck. Having an assistant having a team, whatever that looks like for you, it can dramatically improve your business all around. But here's where designers get stuck. Number one, they ask questions like, I don't actually know how they would support me, it feels like everything would just be easier to do myself or they say I don't know if I can trust someone else to communicate on my behalf or to represent my brand. And the reality is those are all very understandable, very realistic concerns. But they're all very, very, very easy to address. The problem with feeling like you can't let go. The problem with feeling like you have to have your hands in every little thing is that this perspective is going to keep you stuck, it's going to keep you small. So even if you don't have intentions to grow an empire, even if you are doing this part time, I would argue especially if you're doing this work part time. And even if you're just getting started, an assistant can dramatically improve the efficiency and the effectiveness of your work. So I want to first start with four benefits. And then we're going to go through this little exercise and then at the end, I'm going to take you through some very specific examples of tasks that you can outsource to an assistant. Now some of these tasks, many of these tasks, it's gonna be really important that you're working with somebody who is local, that can be boots on the ground for you.

But some of these could be outsourced to somebody who is virtual. I'm always a proponent, because of the work that we do, especially if you're doing in person design, that you find somebody local, they're just going to be that much more helpful. But there's also a lot of merit to working with somebody virtually. So the choice is yours. Once you get to the end of this episode and this exercise, you can sort of look at what kind of help you might want to narrow in on finding and then decide if that role specifically He is designed to be virtual or local. So let's talk about a couple of benefits to hiring. First is growth.

This having someone to help you in all aspects of a project allows you to focus on the activities that are going to propel your business forward. So we're talking about business development. So these are activities, like putting together proposals, going to consultations, going to events where you are likely to meet ideal clients, taking someone to lunch, who might be a good partner, a referral source for you, whatever your business development activities look like, having someone help you with these other aspects is going to free you up and allow you the time that you need to focus on those activities.

All right, number two, satisfaction and who doesn't want to be satisfied with their career. So when you have somebody that is helping you in your business, this ensures that you get to do more of the stuff that lights you up. And this is going to help avoid burnout. So your overall satisfaction in your career can be easier achieved when you've got somebody that can take off those pesky little tasks that just sort of bring it out. Okay.

Number three is client experience. So when you've got somebody on your team helping you out, it helps you to provide your clients with a better experience. For example, they're gonna get emails responded to faster. You can stay engaged in meetings when you can make direct eye contact with your client, while you have an assistant taking notes and jotting down the really important notes.

I've had, I've had designers asked me, Well, what about a transcription service, somebody that can transcribe notes, that is certainly an option. And I would highly recommend something like that, when you're just getting started, or if you find yourself solo at a meeting, this will allow you to stay focused on the client, but a human so not AI, is going to be able to highlight those really important words like pain points, right, highlighting those words, organizing the topics for you, and really putting some context behind those notes. So both are options. But having a human taking notes, I think is always a better option.

When half of the work is being done by an assistant, your client can actually pay less money for services, which gives you the next benefit a competitive edge. So I talk about this more in another episode, it's episode nine how hiring can help your bottom line. So you're welcome to go back. You don't it's not necessarily a precursor to today's episode. But it's a they go hand in hand and they go well together. So when you're done with this episode, go back and listen to episode nine. How hiring can help your bottom line. So this talks about if you're questioning the math behind hiring, so trying to figure out, are you financially ready to hire somebody that is important to address. But also knowing that an employee a staff member can actually help you earn more money and make more money. So that's where I kind of go into that part of it. But when you can give your client a great experience, it does improve your competitive edge. Let's talk about competitive edge because that's the fourth kind of benefit that I'm talking about here today in hiring and having an assistant or a team. Okay. So let's use this example. Let's say that a homeowner is deciding between two designers, one can start in eight weeks. But you can start in six weeks, because you have an assistant who is helping you take on let's say you've got some other projects that you're just wrapping up and then they're gonna go into procurement, and start ordering and project managing and all of that business. You are not bogged down with that work. Now you can pivot to this new client, and you could start with them in just six weeks. Let's imagine too, that your design fees are also competitive by comparison to this other designer because this other solopreneur designer, let's say they're charging 150 $200 an hour. But that's for doing every step in the entire design process. Okay, imagine what that let's compare apples to apples on the same project. Let's just say kitchen design, for example. And let's say there's 100 hours right? If designer a who is working by herself is charging $200 for every hour that she works, compare that to you. You're only charging $200 for those activities that you are directly overseeing right. And then that project management work those smaller tasks. that's being built out at a lower lower hourly rate to your client. Right, but you're still making a markup on that employee. I know there are some designers who recommend a flat fee across the board, for your, for your design business, I don't agree with that model, because that's just assuming that everybody is at the same level and at the state, same skill set, which isn't necessarily true. And there's not a whole lot of industries where you see something like that going on. So I stick to the traditional method that, you know, your, your client is paying less for somebody with lesser experience doing those smaller tasks, like your client doesn't want to pay you $200 an hour to be, you know, returning samples that you ended up not using or any number of other tasks.

And they'd really rather pay a premium for your work doing the work that is your your wheelhouse, right that, that that design, vision, the all of the design type work that comes comes with it, we're gonna get into that specifically in a moment. But I digress. And that is one model. And I'm just saying that I recommend a model where there is a tiered rate for your for you and for your employees. Okay, so we talked about those four benefits, growth, right, that can help you to focus on business development, activities, satisfaction, it allows you to get to do more of the activities that are going to light you up client experience, or clients are gonna have a better experience, because they're getting faster turnaround times.

You're staying more engaged many other ways. And then also that competitive edge, you can oftentimes not always, and I'm not promoting that you are the cheapest, I am just promoting that. There's a scenario where if, you know,

a homeowner is comparing two different designers, if you can start a project faster, because you've got somebody else helping you out, that might be the thing that helps you to get the job. So also go back to Episode Nine, where I talk about kind of the math of hiring and that bottom line. Okay, so let's get into this exercise, there's a couple of steps to it. And the first thing that you're going to do, and you can just kind of think about this out loud, I want you to think about all of the hats that you wear, as a business owner, especially if you're a solopreneur, this will be really easy because there's a lot of hats that you wear. Let's go through some examples. Let's start with business development. So these are activities like networking, working on your social media, connecting with people in your industry or referral partners, putting together proposals and contracts for the folks that you have consulted with another role Operations Officer, okay, who's the person who's going to make sure that there's paper in the copier that meetings are getting scheduled, that clients are getting the updates that they need that's sending out client gifts when, when they're needed? Those kinds of things that are that's the operation officer hat that you've got on in that moment. Okay, next, another hat that you might wear client engagement. For me, this is some of the the fun stuff, consultations, those initial consultations with clients, doing the deep dive interview with the client, that's where you're really starting to understand who your clients are, what makes them tick, and really getting into the story of of your client.

Delivering presentations, obviously, that is one of the biggest aspects of your job, one of the most important aspects of your job, and then just generally answering questions from your clients. So client engagement, number two, or number two, I don't know number See, we're not actually doing a numbered list here, folks. Okay.

All right. Documentation, documentation is getting all the stuff, put pen to paper. So drawings, floor plans, elevations, reflected ceiling plans, art plans, switching diagrams, putting together specifications, okay, there's so much documentation that goes into the work that we do. You know, it's one thing to get into your resource library and into your sample bins and start scheming and pulling out materials and seeing what's going to work. It's another thing to commit those selections to your specifications and to your drawings. So, that is a hat that is a solopreneur you're doing

next, project management and procurement. So, ordering tracking, storing, coordinating deliveries, overseeing installations, these are all activities that are related to procurement and project management. What happens when something arrives damaged, what is the process there what what follow up needs to happen?

Another hat that you are probably wearing, coordinating with tradespeople. So

Maybe you have a general contractor on the project. That's great. There's a there's a one line of communication to go through there. But you might also be dealing with a handful of other trades people thinking about upholstery workers, wallpaper hangers, painters, woodworkers, mill workers, electricians, organizers, installers, receivers. There's a whole army of people behind these projects. And there is a lot of communication and coordinating with them, making sure that everybody's got the right information at the right time. And they're where they're supposed to be, when they say they're going to be there. And that money gets exchanged. This is a really big part of the work that we do. Okay, you might be thinking to yourself, Kate, you haven't even talked about design yet? Well, that's true. So we're going to talk about the role of the designer right aspects like developing the color palette, scheming with materials, playing with fabrics, getting the perfect grout color to go with your tile scheme, hunting for the perfect antique or vintage pieces, playing with furniture, arrangement, space planning, moving walls, coming up with the lighting, plan, sourcing, lighting, curating an art collection, you know, these are all examples of the really fun stuff that we get to do in design. And it's really, as an interior designer, what makes us tick, and I'm sure that's why you're here. That's why you're listening to this. Okay, so we just talked about all the different roles that we have, or the hats that we wear as a solopreneur interior design business owner.

One thing I forgot to mention is that we just had an episode also about hiring. And this is episode 34. Five Signs it's time to hire. So if you can't tell I am passionate about this topic, because I wholeheartedly believe that the right person can really help you shine and grow in your interior design business. And I know it's one of the biggest and hardest first steps in business, but you will be so happy that you did. So if you haven't yet, go back and check out episode 34 Or five signs it's time to hire. Alright, I promise. That's it for today.

So in this next step, this is where we're going to get a little bit interactive. And I want you if you're listening to this and you're not driving, I want you to stop whatever it is that you're doing. And get out a piece of paper. And in a moment, you're going to pause the episode. If you are driving and you can safely pause this episode, you can do this too. But instead of writing your responses, I just want you to kind of brainstorm and think out loud and say out loud, what it is that I'm going to ask you to write there to say and then next time you get to a stopping place, find a piece of paper and write these things down. Okay, because I'm gonna you're gonna write a list of five things. And I want you to get pen to paper at some point but if you're driving it's it works to to just simply say these out loud. Okay, so what are the top five most fulfilling aspects of your job? Your career as an interior designer? What activities bring you the most joy? What lights you up what makes you feel in expired. What are the activities that you could do them all day? If nothing else got in your way, you'd even do them for free. Although I'm not asking you to do that. Maybe we just listed some of those activities a moment ago. If not, that's okay, feel free to add your own. So again, I want you to list your top five favorite things that you love to do. As an interior designer. Go ahead and pause the episode. And when you're ready, come back to me.

Okay, so looking at those top five activities, I want you to ask yourself, How can I do more of that? The reality is that running an interior design business is 80% business and 20% design. So my guess is that your top five favorite activities have to do directly with design, and probably some client engagement too. Okay, so we're going to start to think about and imagine a scenario where you are protecting that 20% of design or, or client engagement, or whatever your top five activities are. And we're going to find ways for you to outsource some of those other activities. So now, there's, there's another step to this. And in this next step, we're going to do the same thing, I want you to repeat the step that we just did. But this time, I want you to write down the five activities that are required of your business, and you hate to do them. It's very important that these are activities that are essential to your business, if it's not essential, and you hate to do it, stop doing that shit. Okay, so what are the activities that are essential, but you dread them, you procrastinate around them, the ones that haunt you, though, and you'd be happy to do a happy dance if you never had to do them again. So the five activities that you absolutely dread, yet are essential to the business. Go ahead and pause this episode. And when you're ready, come back to me.

Okay, so by now, it should be pretty clear what areas would be the first areas to hire for. Often, these are activities that are not in your wheelhouse, or their activities that you can do. But your time is simply better spent doing other activities. And so the next step I would say to you is to use this information to help you come up with a specific job description that allows you to do more of the work that lights you up and less of the work that doesn't. Okay, so what we're trying to do is we're trying to protect that 20% of design work and pass off some of the other stuff that doesn't light you up so much. Now, don't get me wrong. There are plenty of aspects of design, that I still outsource such as annotating drawings, we're gonna get to that here next. So in this in this final little half of this episode, what I'm going to do is I want to use myself as an example. And I'm going to talk about the very specific ways that an assistant can help you. So over the course of my career, I have had to move my business across the country twice. And so I have had a, an array of cast members assisting me over the years, I've had as many as four people working for me in as little as one assistant, who really could help with all the things. I've had Junior interior designers, senior interior designers, administrative assistants, project managers, so I've had experience with as many as four. So always a fairly small operation in the grand scheme of things. But I know to some of you the idea of having four staff members for employees is mind blowing.

Sometimes when I think about it, it is too, but I've also run a team as small as 123 and everything in between. So generally speaking, you're if you're going to have just one employee for now, you want them to have more of a generalist experience, meaning they can do a lot more in different areas. And if and as you grow your team, those roles become more specialized. Okay, so you don't need for people who are generalist, if you have four people working for you, you probably have a senior designer, junior designer, admin assistant slash, you might call that a project manager, you might call that a procurement or, or an expediter. That's another term role that you might have for or procurement manager. So let's get into it. So what I'm going to do now in this last little bit is I'm going to talk about some specific tasks that an assistant can help you With. So if again, if you aren't driving, you may want to write some of these down. But this can help you to draft a job description for an assistant. And these are all things that I've outsourced to an assistant. And one thing I just want to mention before I move into this list is the way that you begin to outsource some of these things is you document it. So documentation is so so so important to working with. For me, it was important when it was just me because every time I sat down at the end of the month, and it was time to Bill my clients, I didn't have to waste any brainpower thinking of like, okay, where do I go to run that report? What buttons do I need to click on and off to send this bill or whatever. I had the steps there, I had the links there, I had screenshots there. These are what we call SOPs, standard operating processes, and they are so important in your business. Now, don't worry, you don't have to have SOPs built in your business. Before you hire.

Your assistant can help you create these SOPs, right. So the first time you go through it with them, you use a program like loom to record your screen, or you take screenshots of what you're doing and a Google doc to go through step by step of what it is that you're doing. I did this together with my assistant, when we switched to a new software, a procurement software project management software. And we sat down together one time and step by step, how to take an item from, you know, all the way from a suggested to approved to Pio to proposal, voices, all the steps and then also another one for how to order something, right. And so how to how to do all of those steps and how to document it. And so we did it once together. And right off the bat she was off and running. And she could use that for every single thing that she ordered, she had a guideline to go off of. And eventually she could do it without looking at the document. But this is a really great way to

to document knowledge and to save that for the future. And they're really easy to update if things change. So, SOPs are your ticket to being able to let go of some of this and to let somebody else take that off your plate. And you know, maybe at first you ask to review things before they go out, right, because you want to double check it you want quality control.But eventually, you can get to a place where you can trust this person.

You might even have for me, brand voice is really important. The way that I send emails, the way that we talk to clients, the way that we talk to vendors, is really important. So any new onboard any new person that works for me, is introduced to a brand guide when it comes to the brand voice and so they understand proper way to open an email proper way to close an email, how to be you know that it's really important to me to be succinct. But make sure you get all the information, the importance of not just doing a huge email where you brained up a bunch of stuff, but to format that email so that it's scannable it's quick for a client to read through, these are all things that you can just simply train somebody to do and it doesn't take a lot of work. So those are a couple of ways that you can kind of let go and help somebody to do these things without you always having to be a part of every little detail. Doesn't that sound good?

Okay, so I'm gonna go through this list quickly. But this is just my own personal brain dump of what are some tasks that I've had assistants helped me with. And I And at times, this has been one person did all of these things. And at times, I've had specialized people who've done them. So I'm just going to kind of go through the list in a general way. And I'm going to go through it looking at each design phase. Okay, so let's start with initial engagement activities they would do number one prep for consultations. So this is things like gathering client notes, putting together our folder with our notes, putting together the welcome kit, we usually keep a stack of about five or six ready to go at all times. They're also making sure we always have fresh ones ready to go. Making sure you've got any tools like a tape measure or or or a pink fan deck, that kind of thing. Dog treats whatever it is that you take to your consultations. You could be putting together a proposal while he or she is making sure that stuff is ready to go okay.

At the consultation, taking notes after the consultation following up with typing up those notes or getting any pertinent information back to your prospective client right away. Okay. predesign predesign design once you've got a client on onboard, they've signed, sealed delivered all their onboarding documents. Now it's time to do the pre design work. This is things like setting up your client in the systems. So for example, we use dubsado, we use a sauna. And we use a project management software, we're in between two different software's, but these are, for example, this might be IV or house design files, studio designer, there's a whole lot of them out there. That's the one I'm talking about. So they get the client set up in Asana, of course, we have a template that she duplicates, and gets that going. dubsado has our canned emails that we use to fire off important information like dates, and milestones, and so on, and so forth, putting together the client binder and the client bin. So every project gets a binder, and it has tabs that go in it. Of course, everything is documented, she knows exactly where those template files are, what the tabs should say on them, what they should look like it's standardized across, every binder looks the same. When it gets started. The bin, this is where we put together inspiration, photos, samples, all of that stuff in it, it's labeled with the clients name, scheduling, the deep dive interview and site survey you guys. I hate scheduling. There's so much scheduling, in the work that we do, thinking about clients schedules, scheduling, trade day scheduling, anything in your business, that is 100%. outsourced to somebody, and they know my availability, they know what times and what days, I'm willing and not willing to work. So that's a very easy thing to outsource. As long as you give them some guidelines, right. So scheduling, the day to do the deep dive interview, the site survey, okay, assisting with the site survey. So this is a really important step for you need to have somebody that is local, that's boots on the ground with you to do this.

So some projects, you may already have drawings. And this isn't necessarily to do a site survey, right? Much, much, much bigger projects, you're going to want to do a laser survey, that's something that you outsource, and then it puts together the initial drawings for you. Sometimes you can also outsource it to a draftsman to go and do the measurements and get all that information. But sometimes you just need to go in and you take the measurements yourself, right. So that is essential for a site survey. Other things that you might do in a site survey is taking inventory of a client's existing items that are up for consideration to be used. This is especially true for art. A lot of times clients are coming to you with certain things that they want you to incorporate. So that is something they can absolutely do for you. So scheduling, doing the deep dive interview, doing the site survey, taking those notes. And then what do you do with all that crap? After you're done? Right? Do you really want to sit there and dump all the photos off your phone and get them organized and scan the notes and draw, scan the drawings? You know, let somebody else do that for you. They know where it goes, there's a folder because you use the same folder structure every time. And that's really easy. This is just pre design. We haven't even gotten into design yet. So already, there's so much that assistant can be helping you do so that you can be doing the other things that really light you up. Okay, concept design, what can assistant what can an assistant help you with in concept design? Obviously, these are going to be activities that someone with some design experience is going to need to have. And it's up to you and your business what that looks like. But here are a couple things that I've done. Number one, develop a preliminary budget. Absolutely an assistant can help with this. I obviously we have conversations with our clients at the outset of a project and again at the consultation where we're getting clear on a budget range. Oftentimes clients don't know or understand exactly what it's going to take to get them to their end results. So you're going to have the responsibility of educating them.

And the way that we do this is we for our area for Denver for the year that it is have some budgetary guidelines to work with. That can help us we can also look back at past projects and see what did certain aspects cost and use that as a guidepost. The other tool that we have for our business and is so easy for you to create for your business is a good better best list of commonly sourced items. So thinking through kitchen and bath design, kitchen faucet bath faucet, what would be a good better best price range for each of those. Thinking about furnishings, let's say you know a single you know, eight foot long sofa, not leather would be an input a good better best, very different than a sectional very different than a bed that has or excuse me

A sofa that has a pullout, bed on it right? So just make a list of the things that you commonly source right for a project and then do a good better best list. And your assistant can go through that list of things that you know, you're going to need a source for this project. And then you can define together. Okay, where does this project fall in this range, good, better best, and help put together a budget range for your client? Am I going to review that before a client sees it? You betcha. I'm going to look that over, but they at least have some tools all ready to go, that they can help establish a preliminary budget. And then together, we can tweak it, creating an initial drawings for the concept design. So anytime I've had a designer working for me, they're responsible for taking the drawings that we put together in a site survey. And they put together the initial drawing set that shows kind of our starting point, they may even come up with initial floor plans or arrangements, if we're going to do some renovating and adding moving walls, rearranging the shell itself. If we're working with an architect, and they're providing drawings, then we're using those drawings as a baseline. And then we'll add in our own drawings on top of those. So next, scheduling and coordinating concept design presentations. So again, coordinating for a concept design presentation, you got to have, you know, if you've got a couple together, and they're your clients, making sure you've got both their schedules, my schedule, my assistant schedule, that's for people schedules to look at, I don't want to deal with that you don't either let somebody else figure that out. And then also, when I say coordinating it, if it's in person, you better be showing up with, you know, for me, it's going to be probably some dark chocolate and some almonds, depending on the time of day, but what else might you need to bring with you? And then of course, taking notes during that concept design presentation. All right. Next, and almost last is design development. So after the concept design presentation, they're coming back, they're putting together the notes, you guys are sitting down, you're doing your brain dump, you're talking next steps, right? And then what is the assistant do in design development to help you more scheduling, scheduling and coordinating trade day. So at this point, you're going to need to put together your request for quotes, and schedule anybody that needs to come to your trade day. Preparing RFQ is preparing the request for quotes. So that's the document that says, This is what we need done. Here are the specifications. Here are the drawings, images, samples, whatever information that person might need, that tradesperson might need, unable to provide you with a quote.

For us, it's very important that we put together all that information in a PDF document that we send over versus text in an email. Okay, so their job is to put together this RFQ again, that is something I do review prior to going out.

Most of the time I've I've definitely had a senior level interior designer working with me who I very much trusted to to oversee that, attending and assisting with trade day. Ordering samples, returning samples, sourcing, bringing you options based on the discussions that you've had and the concepts. So once you've established some things in concept design, now you're sourcing, it's it's not in fathomable to say to a designer or an assistant, I want to see three Chesterfield leather sofas, bring bring me some options, right. And they have some specific marching orders and can bring those to you. And you can, you know, swipe left, swipe right, or, you know, figure it out that way. So bringing you doing that initial research and bringing you the best options. But again, if that is something that you love to do you love the sourcing piece, then protect that maybe that's not something you want to outsource. For me, I really like doing the sourcing, I don't want somebody else to do that. But sometimes it doesn't make sense for me to do all of it. So maybe I'm putting together with kind of those real heavy hitting pieces as those pieces that are going to establish the space, the pieces that are going to really make an impact. And maybe I have them sourcing some of the smaller pieces or some of the pieces that are complementary to the space and there's nothing wrong with that. So maybe it's that you're just not sourcing everything. Okay, I'm checking specs, we call it a spec check. Spec check is okay. I think we like this, this is the one we're gonna go with.

This person would be responsible for nailing down what's the lead time making sure that your pricing is accurate, checking the dimensions on the drawings. Once you've done a spec check, then you can assign it to your drawings and your product management system. So we do a good amount of spec checks prior to committing something to our project management system. So, it historically I've used IV. So once we've made a decision, or we've landed on something, and they do a spec check, so if they do a spec check, we're like, Oh, we love that. And then they took the lead time, it's out of stock for 12 months, we're not going to spend the time adding that to our project management system, we're gonna go find a different one. So doing that due diligence can be a huge time suck it. And if you're the only one doing that, there's just no reason why somebody else can't help you with that. Okay? Once you've done your spec, check assigning selections to your project management system into your drawings. Let's talk about drawings. So depending on your designer skill level, one of the things that I am very meticulous about it's very, very important to me into my drawings. And what I put out there are annotations. And while they're very important to me, I don't like to do. So.

Annotations are everything that goes on top of a drawing that points and labels and identifies the details. And this is what you can pass this off to an electrician or a mill worker or contractor. And they're not going to be calling you with a bajillion questions, because you've got it all laid out. So labeling all of your materials, all of your dimensions and making sure you've got the right dimensions, putting in your scale all of those things ago, and annotating drawings. That is something that an assistant does, in addition to checking furniture sizes, and saying, Hey, is that going to work in this space, based on the dimensions?

Preparing the final budget. So as we are adding things to the specification program house, for example, we like to just break out and present to our clients, the budget, and we'll break out things like furniture, lighting, how Gosh, labor, that might be another one. Plumbing, it just depends on the project, how much detail we break it out, but we don't you clients see itemized pricing, their itemized pricing, but it's really helpful to be able to present, okay, what's our overall budget, and then including, like estimated shipping, tax all that business. So they are able to help prepare that final budget. Yes, that is something that I oversee before it gets put out there.

Next, preparing and preparing all presentation materials. So when you're putting together a project, there's a good chance that you are, you've probably got a table and you are looking through hundreds if not 1000s of material samples, get rid of the ones that don't matter. Label the ones that you're going to show your clients. So labeling labeling, we put a label on the back with a sticky note of everything that is kind of committed to and we say okay, we're putting this here, we're putting this fabric on this sofa or whatever. And then just making sure that those are all organized and ready for the presentation. You definitely don't want to show up without all of your materials organized. So that is something that they do to prepare. Another thing that they do to prepare for presentations is getting snacks can you guys tell I'm a snack lover? I feel like it's snack 30 right now. But yes, so we like to show up to presentations with snacks. If it's breakfast, we'll bring some snack breakfast snacks. If it's after noon, we'll bring some munchies. Pro tip, nothing messy or that you need a fork with so cubed cheese, almonds, chocolate, that kind of thing. We always we one of our preliminary questions is do you have any food allergies that we need to know about? And this is why.

So always bring the snacks make people happy, they can make decisions better when they're feeling fed. So we also will grab a handful of bubbly waters, that sort of thing. So again, I don't want to have to think about that. I want to make sure that it's there though. And that's something they can do. And then of course back to taking notes. I always have somebody with me at a presentation at a meeting of any kind who are taking notes for us. So hat's design development, last step procurement and project management. So we've got approval on things and it's time to get ordering. So finalizing and placing those orders, tracking products handling issues, for items that arrive damaged, arranging for deliveries, planning and coordinating installation days. If you attended my project management masterclass back in November, you know, how much detail goes into installation days? There's a lot and we do it because we only want to do one install day or two, if need be, but they know their marching orders for those. So that's that's their sole responsibility.

And if something doesn't get done or doesn't happen for those installed days, they know that they are accountable for that. Coordinating with tradespeople, okay. So during construction, you might be coordinating with a wallpaper installer, a millworker painter, electrician, all those folks. And then not to mention weekly email updates to the clients. So we have a running list of things that we might want to ask or update our client on at the end of the week. And they are responsible for getting those emails sent out

each week. So if this seems like a lot, well, it is an imagined, imagine what activities you would have time to work on. If you had someone who was responsible for everything that we just listed, there's still plenty of work to be done as a business owner outside of this, you know, I didn't even talk about the reason I didn't talk about creating mood boards or sourcing finishes, or materials or fixtures or furnishings, as because those are the things I like to do. Okay. And I didn't talk too much about I didn't talk about client consultations, yes, I have somebody coming with me, they schedule it, they take notes, but I'm running the show there, I want to be the face of my business. So there's so much work to be done, in addition to everything I just listed. And I don't want you to forget how much more there is to do. But hopefully, this gives you an idea of some tasks that you can outsource and get help wit

That's going to allow you to do the things that really, really light you up. You know, just my final thought on that is that this is not to suggest that you need to go find one person that can do everything I just talked about.

Sometimes that's possible, right? I've had a designer who could do all of those things. She didn't love project management, right. And so eventually, we had to hire a project manager so that she could focus more on design and project manager could do what it is that they did well. But maybe you find somebody just to start that can just do those admin tasks to do the scheduling. Who can arrange deliveries who can organize your samples, who can put together your specifications, who can come to your meetings, and assist you with notes, who can help you do a site survey, but maybe they're completely hands off on drawings, maybe they're completely hands off on picking out materials and that kind of thing. And that's okay. So just use this as a guideline to help you start to open yourself up to the idea of how somebody how an assistant can support you. And next, your job is to figure out what role does that look like for you in your business, write a job description, make sure you do the math. But typically, an assistant can help you start earning more money in your business. If you're willing to bring them on, get them trained, be willing to trust them. So that you can do the stuff that lights you up. I want to mention two additional resources and book two books that have been really helpful for me in this area in my business. So yes, go back and listen to episode nine. But two books, both by the same author, there's traction by Gino Wickman, and rocket fuel by Gina Whitman and Mark winters. So the idea behind it, traction is actually a series of its attraction series. But those are the two books in the series that are important for somebody like you. It talks about the visionary, and I'm guessing that's you, and the integrator. And that's the person who supports the visionary and basically get shit done. So traction and rocket fuel are two books that have been really helpful for me. And it will help you to understand the role of the visionary, the person who comes with the vision and the ideas, and the integrator and how they can help you take those ideas and get them onto paper, get them documented, and move on. But they also can act kind of as your filter. So I love Audible. So I listen to a lot of my books, but then I often end up buying them and then going back and rereading them. So whatever your fancy is, those are some books that have been really helpful. Okay, so thanks for hanging out with me today. Let me know how this landed for you. Hopefully you're feeling inspired. Hopefully you're feeling like hiring a designer or hiring an administrative assistant or hiring somebody that can do a little bit of everything is more attainable, and you can kind of see the myriad of ways that they can help you out and assist you on a project. Alright, that's all I've got for today. I'll see you next time.

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