Who to Hire First in your Interior Design Business
Updated September 2023
Are you feeling maxed out in your business, nervous to market because you’re not sure you can take on more clients, and struggling with projects that just never seem to end? Are you thinking about how amazing it would be to hire someone to help you, but then you realize you have ZERO time to interview, onboard, or train someone, so the cycle of busyness continues?
Today, I’m talking about how to know who to hire and what responsibilities to give them. Be sure to check out the Designed to Scale® Hiring Blueprint for all the tools, templates, and resources you need to hire with confidence.
Things to consider when hiring for your interior design business
My clients range from solopreneurs who are in the first year of business to seasoned pros with large teams and decades of experience. The biggest problems I see when my interior designers and wedding planners want to hire (before they hire me) is that they:
1) have no systems in place for bringing on a new team member or training them.
2) hire one person to do $20/hour tasks as well as $50/hour tasks and pay them a higher rate than necessary.
3) end up back at the drawing board, having to hire someone new because the last hire didn’t work out.
I was recently reviewing a job post that included the following responsibilities:
Expense tracking
Bookkeeping
Business strategizing
Social media posts
Team management
Oversee projects
Client management
Vendor/product follow up
Office supply ordering
Right hand to the CEO
My heart started racing when I saw the variety of tasks, skills, and pay grades within this single position. It also ached for the business owner.
This designer would either be paying someone a six-figure salary to focus on business strategy and team management while also doing day-to-day entry-level administrative tasks. OR she would be paying someone an entry-level salary while expecting them to be skilled at providing C-level support and strategy.
Sigh.
Essentially this hire will either be overpaid, overqualified, and frustrated, or they will be under-qualified, overwhelmed, and not cut out for the job. In both cases, it’s likely that the hire won’t last long, therefore costing this business owner even more money and time.
How to know who to hire in your interior design business
It all starts with figuring out what tasks you want to delegate, then figuring out the skills a person would need to do those tasks, and then finding the right person. In my Designed to Scale® Hiring Blueprint, our delegation checklist lets you check off exactly what tasks you need help with so you can see what role a majority of those tasks fall under.
While I’m not an HR specialist or an employment attorney, here’s what I’ve seen in my years of experience as a small business owner (with this business and my wedding planning business) working with a 15-year HR veteran and my attorney and through helping other business owners make these types of decisions.
Overlapping responsibilities are often the ones that don’t get done. If you have five people on your team and all of them are responsible for tracking leads, then guess who will track leads? No one.
Job roles should be clearly defined so one person has full responsibility for certain tasks and everyone knows who to go to for what. This also lets everyone know exactly what they should be doing each day (this even helps my clients who are in partnerships where the daily partner tasks overlap).
What tasks to outsource or delegate first in your interior design business
Here’s how to get started with figuring out what tasks to outsource:
List out all the tasks that need to be done in your business, even include the things you wish you could do.
Assess the list.
Circle the items you love to do. Those you get to keep!
Then assess the unmarked items.
What do you dislike doing, what do you wish you had time to do?
If you know how to do these things-are they entry level, are they advanced, how much time do they take, do you have a certain way you like this task completed, is there someone already working with you who could do that task?
If you don’t know how to do these things, who do you think could do them?
Are the tasks revenue generating or not?
What from the list can be automated with existing software you currently use, or with the implementation of a new software or system?
Can someone else do them, or do you need to be the person to do these tasks?
Now let’s categorize these tasks so you can see where they fall.
I’ll show you what I mean using the example above.
Tasks
Expense tracking
Bookkeeping
Business strategizing
Social media posts
Team management
Oversee projects
Client management
Vendor/product follow up
Office supply ordering
Right hand to the CEO
From this list, let’s assess and categorize the tasks.
Bookkeeping
Daily expense entry-1 hour/week, no $
Weekly reconciliation, AP, AR-1 hour/week, no $
Monthly reports - 30 minutes/month, no $
Submit sales tax - 15 minutes/month, no $
Client/Product/Office Related
Oversee projects-2 hours/week, no $
Client management- 2 hours/week, no $
Vendor/product follow up - 2 hours/week, no $
Office supply ordering-20 minutes/week, no $
Operations Related
Team management-1 hour/week, no $
Business strategy-1-2 hours/month, $
Support CEO-1-3 hours/week, $
Marketing Related
Social media posting & engagement-2-3 hours/week, $
To me, this looks like a few different pay rates, right?
Design assistant for about 24 hours/month
Operations manager for about 10-18 hours/month
Bookkeeper for about 8-9 hours/month
Marketing coordinator for about 12 hours/month
For me, seeing it broken out like this gives a clear idea of what roles and pay rates are needed. This also breaks it out so you can see what tasks you should and maybe shouldn’t outsource. For example, the bookkeeping tasks are non revenue generating, the business owner doesn’t like doing them, and there is really only one way to do them. That makes total sense to outsource those items to a bookkeeper.
If this client outsourced the bookkeeping tasks, she would have about eight hours back in her month to work on something else.
SO—this might mean she can use that time to focus on social media because she knows she books clients from posting her work online and she has a certain way she wants that done. OR, she can use those hours to map out her social media strategy so she can hire someone to do that work. OR, she could use those hours to close out open projects, reach out to past clients for referrals, or maybe she’ll just work less.
The typical first hires for interior design companies
I know it can sound scary to hire multiple people, but what if you could save money by hiring the right people?
And what if your first hire helped you to onboard and train your team, so you didn’t have to take any time away from your business?
For my interior design clients, typically the first ongoing tasks I see outsourced are:
CAD + renderings
Purchasing
Office and client management
Social media
Project management
Does it feel like you need help in your business, but you’re not sure who you would hire, how you would have time to train, or how you could really leverage that investment? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then be sure to check out the Designed to Scale® Hiring Blueprint for all the tools, templates, and resources you need to hire with confidence.
The bottom line to all of this is that you want to make sure the person you hire is the person your business really needs and that this hire will free you up to do more of the revenue-generating work you love.
Get more tips for managing your interior design business or wedding planning business by signing up below:
Talk soon!
Katie
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