Do you work long, hard hours … week after week … but don’t end up with much in the way of income to show for all your hard work and effort?
This probably means you’ve got money leaks in your business and may not be aware of how much of your hard earned money is slipping through your fingers.
You’ll be surprised at how much you’re really missing when you stop and look at where the money is escaping.
The great news is that once you start plugging the leaks, you’ll quickly see the change in your income!
Remember, you’ll get more money from the jobs you already have … just think what you can do with the new jobs in the future. But first, you gotta find those leaks!
Start with the Money Leaks Lookout List… but before we begin, I need to be clear and make one true statement: Your time is your money!
- The most common money leak is spending too much time on a single task, like 4 hours and 3 showrooms to choose a fabric combination for a living room or 3 hours on a wall sconce selection. You know no one is going to pay you for that many hours.The reality is you need to work quickly in order to be paid well. When you plan ahead and set an intention to complete a task in a specific amount of time, you usually accomplish it. Then you can actually bill the time spent.
- Are you making unnecessary trips to see your client? This includes stopping by to see how the contractor is doing (unpaid), solving a design question that has nothing to do with your part of the job (unpaid) or delivering the pillows when they should be delivered by the workroom even thought there’s a delivery charge added to the invoice (silly and unpaid.)The reality is you need to run your business like a business, instead of a charity for wealthy clients. They can afford to pay for your time, so don’t donate it when it’s unnecessary. Again, your time IS your money.
- This big money leak comes from letting the client run the job – telling you what to do next, instead of you telling them how you’ll accomplish a request.You must clearly outline how many selections you’ll provide, how many meetings you’ll have with a client and what you’ll accomplish in those meetings. This will allow you to be efficient with your time and give good value to your client.
The easiest way to accomplish all the above, and stop you’re money leaks, is with a design service fee that specifically lays out what you provide, with a timeline and how much it costs.
Design service fees are actually easy to calculate with my Work Less – Get Paid More, Design Service Fees Made Easy, Project Time Estimating System 2.0, the templates walk you through your design job in the order that we were taught in school: programing, schematics, design development, project management, etc. with all the little tasks listed that fall into those categories. You just assign an amount of time to each task that you need to do, add your internal hourly rate and Project Time Estimating calculates your fee for you.
It’s like magic, but better! And an added bonus is that with a design service fee, you’re paid before you provide the design work … instead of weeks or even months after. Can you think of anything better?!
There’s still time to get the updated version of Project Time Estimating System 2.0 and join the 4-Part webinar series, so you can quickly calculate how much time it’ll take you to complete an interior design job and confidently name a fee that leaves you with a profit!