What Type of Design Service Should You Offer to Be Profitable?

You are thinking of becoming an entrepreneur, offering your designer skills to your potential new clients and you want to be profitable as soon as possible - but what is the most important consideration, especially at the start?

Understanding What Type of Design Service That You Would Like to Offer.

In becoming a designer, what type of design do you wish to become known for or are you known for at present?

To achieve this you need to be crystal clear about what you know and what type of design you desire to offer. Why?

To begin with, it is easier to offer design services that you have the training (both formal and/or informal) and have some type of relational experience with.

Also realize and consider:

You Will Never Be Sustainably Profitable if You Don't Like Your Design Work

While there are so many factors why designers are not profitable in their businesses it often is due to the realization that they really don't like the type of design services they are offering.

A better approach would be to take the time to discern from the start what type of design service you should offer. Now this is definitely a complex question that can be overwhelming to approach. However, wouldn't it be advantageous to consider this now instead of waiting to re-think this later. You don't want to waste precious time, energy, money and other lost opportunities due to this initial negligence.

Although there are several ways you can go about figuring this out for yourself, including considering your experience, education and overall exposure, your first consideration should be:.

Understanding what you really, truly like to do - ("your passion.")

Specifically this is YOUR DESIGN DESIRE.

Why is this important?

Your desire will give you the inspiration and drive to continue with your business when you are faced with the hard work of starting your business and when you encounter obstacles along the way.

If you are not truly interested in your business, both in heart and mind - you will have difficulties weathering things when times are challenging. Therefore what you offer needs to be aligned with that desire. Furthermore, you will not be profitable and it will be difficult to maintain any profitability over the long term.

Given that business is always evolving, it never is exactly the same - you need to have the ability to effectively deal with anything and everything that will come your way, particularly over the lifetime of your business enterprise. This is made much easier when you are truly committed and actually enjoy the type of design services that you are providing.

For example, perhaps you like to work with 19th Century designs for living rooms why would you offer designing contemporary kitchens or eclectic dining rooms?

A Practical Approach

Finding your cause, a "passion", a calling, an aspiration - call it what you like - but it needs to be something that you can become involved, engaged and committed to and that you will enjoy thinking about, literally all of the time.

Your ability to be creative and to sustain this momentum in your design business will be a real challenge; so you must have the proper mindset in place. Never underestimate how much your own intentions play a part in this equation. Your identification and "feel" for your design offerings will surely be reflected in your attitude and enthusiasm about your business.

Then of course there are the more technical, practical aspects of being an entrepreneur that also require you to be fully engaged and able to make decisions and formulate plans. As you learn "how to be an entrepreneur" - the dedication and discipline that is necessary will be in short supply if you are not more than 100% interested in your own business and what it has to offer.

Let's just say that your heart needs to be in it.

Finding What Your Desire as a Designer Is

Well this is certainly a full question and not easy to answer! However, it seems as though many successful designers often offer very specific types of design.

If you are not interested in offering a whole range of design services, perhaps the solution is for you to focus on one area and not become overwhelmed.

Here a few suggestions that you may wish to contemplate:

· Colour specialist

· Furniture specialist

· Space planning expert

· Fabric consultations

· Art and/or antiques advisor

· Ornamentation/Accoutrement advisor (lamps, mirrors, pictures, ornamentation)

· Organic advisor - about plants, flowers and anything that grows.

· Lighting advisor

· Decoration advisor

· Specific type of room specialist

· Period-type specialist

These are just a few suggestions of course. It is not intended to be comprehensive, but rather to give you a brief overview of what you may consider.

Research and discover what your desire is - look beyond what your head says and consider some of what your heart feels.

Then you may be able to truly realize your design business potential.