3 Steps To Start An Interior Design Business - If You have Zero Time
Would you love to earn a great income from your Interior Design talents?
For many of us here, that’s something we dream of.
You could leave your 9-5 job that you hate, achieve a flexible work/life balance, enjoy financial freedom, and escape the current rat race. Imagine not spending hours commuting or working for a boss who doesn't appreciate you.
Or maybe you’ve already achieved those goals, but what is most appealing is by being able to make a great income doing something that you LOVE!
Whatever the reason, for many of us, having an Interior Design business that generates a great income remains just a dream.
That’s because starting an Interior Design business that makes enough money to leave your current job or situation requires time—a resource unfortunately in short supply for most of us!
Work, school, kids, family commitments, personal commitments, exercise, driving kids to activities, managing household admin—it all takes time!
So today, I want to break down the task of starting an Interior Design business into 3 simple steps you can follow—even if you only have 30 minutes a day!
The three key steps:
When it comes down to success in business when time is tight, you’ve got to understand the three key words:
Efficiency, Prioritization And Simplicity.
What matters is that you only do the minimum amount that is effective to reach your goal. The needle-turning tasks that will take your business from A to B.
Everything in between is irrelevant when time is scarce. Irrelevance that won’t bring clients in, irrelevance that won’t make you money.
So what is Efficiency, Prioritization And Simplicity? These three steps?
1: Efficiency.
Efficiency is about maximizing output with minimum time and energy. It involves finding the quickest methods to complete tasks using minimal inputs, while still achieving your goals.
But how do we implement efficiency when starting our Interior Design Business? How do you know what’s efficient and what’s not when it comes to the pivotal tasks of setting everything up?
If you’re just starting out, you might not be familiar with these tasks. Or, you may know a few but not all of them.
So, I'm going to outline what these tasks are. They're part of what I call the "5 Step Principle Method," which I teach extensively and have implemented in my businesses to make them successful today:
1: Building a brand
2: Marketing your business and services
3: Setting your prices
4: Putting systems in place for your business to run smoothly
5: Delivering your projects efficiently and effectively
When we talk about being efficient, we’re talking about not taking weeks to decide on your business name or the colour of your logo. Yes, following processes is good, but perfection isn’t necessary right away. For example, if your logo is green to align with your eco-friendly designs and ideal client, it doesn’t matter if it's dark green or a few shades lighter at this stage. It's about aligning something with your and your ideal client’s values rather than spending weeks deciding on the exact shade, font, or other details.
Because if you over think these decisions, you won’t make any progress and will find yourself in the same position six months or a year from now.
2: Prioritization.
Now, you could argue that this is similar to efficiency, but I would strongly disagree.
Prioritization focuses on determining what tasks should be tackled first based on their importance or impact. Efficiency, on the other hand, focuses on how tasks are completed, aiming to achieve the highest output with the least amount of time, resources, and effort.
Do you see the difference?
Let’s revisit the 5-step principle method we discussed earlier:
1: Building a brand
2: Marketing your business and services
3: Setting your prices
4: Putting systems in place for your business to run smoothly
5: Delivering your projects efficiently and effectively
I’ve made this process really easy for you by organizing the key tasks in the correct order of prioritization so that you can be both efficient and prioritize effectively.
There’s no point in having everything set up to deliver your projects efficiently and effectively if you haven’t addressed your branding or marketing first. If you activate this part of your business machine before setting up your branding or marketing, then you are wasting time and energy on something that isn’t a priority yet. If you haven’t started marketing and beginning to bring in paying customers, then having your project delivery set up and ready to go is simply a waste of your time at this stage.
3: Simplicity.
So, how do you simplify this process? It may seem like there's so much to do, and the feeling of overwhelm starts creeping in again. You might be asking, "How am I going to get all this done?"
Well, here’s the secret...
Break it down into manageable, bite-sized chunks. Whether it's 30 minutes or an hour a day, use whatever time you have. Break it down so that every day you can achieve something that pushes your business forward.
The best way to do this is to outline the 5 main steps as big titles. Then, beneath each section, start listing the specific tasks you need to complete. And I don’t mean just "do my logo"; I mean break it down into ALL the tasks that will complete that part. Give yourself a deadline for each of these tasks, like 30 minutes, and stick to that deadline.
Over time, these small tasks will accumulate into significant achievements, which you can start ticking off and really begin to see the results—and reap the rewards!
So there you have it.
Efficiency, Prioritization, and Simplicity—three words that changed my business and my life. They can change yours too, taking you from where you are now to where you want to be.