Ready to get your design process done?

Interior Designers, I have some exciting news to share with you today!  As you may know, the Design Roadmap Course is my signature training where I teach you everything you need to know to completely transform your interior design businesses with the Design Roadmap System.  It is an in-depth deep-dive, and gives you everything you need to get the system up and running, from start to finish.  If you are ready to go all-in and completely transform your business, the complete Design Roadmap Course is for you.  

The Design Roadmap course has been available as an all-inclusive online course that gives you everything you need to get the Design Roadmap System up and running.  But I also realize that online courses aren’t for everyone.  They require a lot of time and self-motivation to DIY all of the steps on your own.  You’re a busy designer and trying to DIY an online course may just feel like too much right now.  Believe me,  I get it!  I’m notorious for purchasing online courses that I never complete - I mean well and I know the information is valuable, but I just have trouble showing up on my own to do the work.  I do much better when I have a coach to customize the information for me and hold me accountable.  When I have a coach, I make 10x the progress, every time.  

That’s why I’m so excited to announce today that I will now be offering 1:1 coaching to learn and implement the Design Roadmap System.    This means you’ll be able to work with me directly and customize the system for your personality and your business.  I’ll meet you exactly where you are and tailor the system for your experience level.  Plus, our in-person or zoom coaching sessions will hold you accountable to do the work so it won’t slip to the bottom of your to-do list.  We will customize our pace to work with your schedule so we can move at a pace that is most effective for you. 

To get you pumped up about learning the Design Roadmap System with me, I’m going to be doing a 5 part blog series to highlight each module of the Design Roadmap Course and explain how they can radically improve your business.  This week I’ll be focusing on Module 1: Foundations.  

Module 1: Foundations

The first time I taught the Design Roadmap Course, I didn’t have a Foundations Module.  I just jumped right into teaching my students how to create their own Design Roadmaps.  What I quickly realized was that there is a lot of background information that you need to know and have organized in order to create your first Design Roadmap.  So the Foundations module was created to fill that gap and teach those foundational pieces.  

What are those foundational pieces? 

They are:

A Design Process

A Design Schedule

Design Fees

Time Tracking

Design Process

In the years before I created my design process, I felt a bit like I was following breadcrumbs on a dark trail in my design business. I could see the next step ahead of me, but if you asked me what was just around the corner 2 or 3 weeks ahead, I had no idea.  

When my clients asked me when the design would be complete so they could give the plans to their contractor, I also had no idea.  Any dates I gave them were wishful thinking at best, which led to a lot of missed deadlines and frustrated clients. 

 It was super stressful, and didn’t allow me to plan at all.  It also didn’t instill a whole lot of confidence in my clients when it looked like I was just winging it.  When I finally created my design process, wrote it down and followed it, it began to change everything for me, and it was the first step in getting my business organized.

That's why I begin Module 1 with teaching you how to create your own design process. You’ll learn what is in a standard design process for kitchen and bath, and see examples of what a process can look like to help get you started.   

Then, you’ll get a whole workbook that will walk you through creating your own, customized design process.  If you’re a seasoned designer, this is going to feel so good to get your honed process out of your head and finally get it organized and on paper.  If you’re a newbie and have no idea what your process should be, I’ll let you steal my process that I’ve been using successfully in Brandenburg Studios for years.  Either way, I’ve got you covered and at the end of this section, you’ll have your own design process completed.  Finally!  That’s worth the price of admission, right there!  

A Design Schedule 

As exciting as that is, a design process is just a pretty piece of paper without a design schedule to back it up.  If you’ve written down processes in the past but never followed them (and they got lost in some dusty file somewhere) it’s probably because you were missing the key step of adding in a schedule.  So in this module, you’ll also learn how to create a design schedule and plan your projects out on the calendar, week-by-week (hello productivity!).

Do you know what this means?  This means that instead of writing out a lengthy to-do list each week, instead you’ll just be following your schedule for the week that was already planned out automatically with your process.  Wha-what?   Heck yeah!  

Design Fees

All of this is well and good, but if you don’t know how to charge for your time, your business is never going to succeed.  That was another thing that was super stressful for me before I got my processes organized.  When my clients asked me how much the design was going to cost, I really had no idea!  I’d pull a number out of the air, and hope for the best.  Nine times out of ten, I’d end up over budget and having to explain to the clients why I needed more money.  Or worse, I’d be so embarrassed that I would just discount the client’s bills without telling them.  Either way, it was a mess that led to thousands in lost income. 

When I finally figured out how to estimate my design fees it made the whole process so much easier.  There are a few different ways to come up with your design fees, and I’ll take you through them, step by step (with worksheets).  At the end of this section, you’ll feel confident that you are budgeting correctly for your design fees, and you’re going to get paid (and paid well!) for all your hard work. 

Time Tracking

One question I get asked all the time is how you integrate all of this into your time tracking system.  Over the years, I’ve figured out how to get everything aligned, so when me and my team are tracking our time, it’s done right.  When your time tracking is aligned with your process, you can quickly and easily create your invoices, and quickly and easily pull up reports to estimate future projects.  I’ll teach you how to keep great records so you can make the best use of the data you collect.  This is foundational and something you should set up before you bill one hour of design work.  

The Foundations module is a meaty one that stands on its own.  Even if you never take it any further with the Design Roadmap System, getting your design process completed and learning how to schedule and charge for your time is something you’ll use on a daily basis in your business moving forward.  

It’s simply what every designer needs to get established in their business.   If you’ve never gotten your design process figured out, or just need help in clarifying it and getting it into a usable format, this module is for you.  

If you’re ready to get your process streamlined once and for all, why wait?  Schedule a free discovery call with me to learn more about 1:1 coaching and see if we’re a good fit to work together.  I’d love to hear about the challenges you’re facing in your business right now and explore how we can blast past them together.  

Schedule a free discovery call HERE

Next week I’m going to dig into Module 2, the Design Roadmap.  In that blog, we’ll learn how creating my first Design Roadmap completely transformed my business and how you can integrate this powerful tool.