This is the first of two shorter newsletters, this week and next week.
Behind the scenes I'm moving house, and I'm fastidiously restricting all activities to their allocated time boxes in my calendar.
This week's business mainly concerns a gaping hole in the design process that I fell into while writing the System.
In my accountability groups, fee proposals, photoshoots and a fortnight lost to procurement admin all draw the same groan of recognition. And similarly, installation. Which makes it strange that a profession with advice on almost everything has almost none on that. But then, not so strange when you consider that the process model we all work to leaves it out as well.
The focus on installation leads to an audit for you, which takes just a minute or two and needs no new thinking.
Then dates: one I can now be precise about; and one I can't mention just yet ๐คซ.
1. This week's blogpost
Installation: The Stage That Isn't There
I didn't set out to have a theory about installation. I set out to write a course and in so doing, discovered the design process as it's normally presented completely skips over a key project landmark.
It's bad enough that the model our profession has borrowed from architecture lumps procurement in as a subset of the construction stage, but this week I realised that our hand-me-down design process assumes we take the keys from the contractor and hand the building directly over to the client, job done.
At least procurement gets a mention: installation is nowhere to be seen in the process. And this really matters. It isn't automatically in the fee. If it is not in the fee, it is not in the proposal. If it is not in the proposal, your client has never been told it is coming, and is asked to fund the completion of their own scheme at the point when they are exhausted, and broke.
The blogpost makes the case, answers the three objections you will hear, and sets out the correction.
2. The bleed, or the moment?
There seem to be two routes the installation end of a project follows, and I wonder if you've actively chosen your path?
Way One: furniture and fittings arrive as they come due. The house fills up over several weeks. There is no single event and no before and after, and there's a danger the project will not so much finish as peter out, with a few things still outstanding and a general feeling of anticlimax.
Way Two: installation is an operation. It has a date, a team, a running order and a van. The client returns home to complete transformation.
Obviously, a two-room refresh doesn't need a military campaign, and there are horses for courses.
A client who deftly backs out of finishing touches can be a real frustration for designers - as much for the client's sake, as for their own - but I hear this less often from designers who treat the end as an event.
I get that it can be a function of budget, not every project warrants bells and whistles, not every client has the budget for them. But if your model bears it, and if installation is named and priced at the outset, several familiar frustrations get easier at once. The project actually completes. There is something worth photographing when it does. The scheme arrives at full strength rather than three-quarters of it. And the money was agreed months before anybody needed to ask for it.
So, I have a handful of rhetorical questions for you?
- Exactly how do you handle installation?
- Did you design your process intentionally, or has it simply turned out that way?
- Does "installation" appear anywhere in the last fee proposal you sent?
- What percentage of your projects make it all the way to the finish line, with the scheme complete to photography-standard?
- Could you flex your process to help improve these outcomes?
3. Coming Up
๐ Monday 21 September - Business in a Box reopens.
Last orders - don't miss out, we won't run again until 2027.
We'll meet every Tuesday from 10-11.30am for 12 weeks. Live groupwork, online, with a maximum twelve new designers - all determined to get up and running in Q4. And, you get the full Interior Design Practice System as part of course materials.
Meetings are led by me, and together we'll make a solid plan for your new or pivoting business, and get your marketing started. We finish on 8th December. This is the antidote to procrastination.
First live session: 10am, Tuesday 22 September. There are still a couple of seats - join the group.
๐ Monday 28th - Interior Design Practice System.
Launching on Monday 28th September. September, as promised, but the end of the month rather than the middle. Installation is the reason. Having found the hole described above, I went back and rebuilt the delivery end of the course, rather than ship a system carrying the same gap as everything else. Installation now has its own module, its own workflow, its own entry and exit conditions, and its own line in the fee proposal. Find out more here.
๐ Wednesday 23 September, 11am. Branding and Marketing Webinar
I hope to see you at this event: Peter Burch of March Branding, on taking an exacting approach to your brand and your website. Free and live, and the joining link will be in the Hothouse group.
๐ October - the one I'm not yet allowed to tell you about. I have been asked to do something this autumn, and I'm really chuffed, I hope to be able to say more about this next week...
4. My Week In Hothouse
Briefly, because there is a van to arrange.
A big week. I received an invitation that reinforced my belief that if you make a plan and keep at it, good things arrive. More on that next week.
And a dam broke: I have decided it is time to get some help behind the scenes, and it is a considerable relief not to be doing all of this alone.
I get my own flat back in ten days. Alongside the removals admin, I am chuffed to report that:
- the course advanced
- the blog went up
- the clients were seen
- the newsletter dropped
- and the dots kept multiplying on the gym chart
That is the entire report, except to say that I am looking forward to Q4 enormously. I have high hopes for the year end, and for getting us all into pole position for 2027.
Final Word
This was a floor week, and the floor held.
See you next Sunday.
Julia
Founder, Hothouse
Responses