Tips for Interior Design Business Owners Working Remote
As designers, we love to work with our senses. We are used to walking the aisles of a fabric store and flipping through wallpaper books, but it seems overnight that was replaced with browsing our wholesalers online. More people than ever are working from home and adjusting to online task lists, zoom calls, and email correspondence. We are finding ourselves in front of screens more than ever. How do we manage to keep a flow throughout the day while sitting in front of the computer? Here are some tips that interior designers can follow to stay productive while working remote:
Build Your At Home Resource Library
Nothing can replace seeing and touching the colors and textures of fabrics, wallpaper, paint colors, and tiles in person. Unfortunately, these days it’s difficult to safely browse your favorite suppliers. Building your resource library at home can save you a lot of time and frustration. Keep your samples organized close to your workstation so it’s easy to pull inspiration at a moment's notice! We wrote a whole blog post on how to organize your samples here.
Block Days for Client Meetings vs. Office Work
Plan your virtual meetings with clients all in one day, or a chunk of a day. I like to use Monday mornings to get organized and set a good foundation for the rest of the week and then meet with clients on Monday afternoons. If you plan your client meetings throughout your work day, it will start to feel like you can’t get anything finished. By grouping them together you become more efficient. It’s easier to hold your client (and yourself) to that 1-hour time slot when you have another virtual meeting to get to.
Plan Your Day in 90 Minute Chunks
90 minutes is the max you should devote to a task at one time. I find that I need to block out 90 minute intervals when working in floor plans or rendering software, but I will group smaller tasks to fill the 90 minutes to keep the flow. For example, I might spend 30 minutes clearing out my inbox before an hour long meeting with our virtual interior design assistants. Then, I’ll take a short break after to fill up my water bottle, before sitting down to do some space planning work.
Plan Breaks for Yourself
Speaking of taking a short break- No one should be expected to sit in front of their computer all day. Your productivity will quickly start decreasing and you won’t enjoy your work. The US has cultivated the idea that productivity = working long hours, but that isn’t true! Plan a morning walk, lunch break, or an afternoon coffee break. You will find that the time you spend focused between these planned breaks will actually increase your productivity, rather than sitting at a desk for 10 hours straight. The best part about remote work is setting your own schedule - set aside time for things that make you happy outside of your interior design practice.
Delegate Whenever You Can
As an Interior Design business owner you know by now that you need to rely on your people. This can mean your vendors, contractors, delivery service, storage company, and employees. What does it look like to delegate to someone you work with, but isn’t an employee? For example, a good storage company will inspect your products upon receiving and email you pictures. Share a virtual doc with all the items that will be coming and from where. An employee or virtual assistant can fill this virtual spreadsheet in with the name of the shipper, tracking, and ETA. Ask them to fill in the date of receival and any notes (scratches, broken, missing one). Violá! You have all of the information you need to schedule install day in one place.
Follow up on Progress at Regular Intervals
The first thing that comes to mind when I say “follow up on progress” is probably on-site visits, but as Interior Designers, there is so much more under the surface that we are responsible for. The timeline for custom furniture, window treatments, and rugs can all get delayed if you are not on top of your vendors. There are many project management tools that help you keep track of all these moving pieces. Get into a daily habit of keeping a running list of your interior design projects. You can use a tool such as Trello or Asana, or you could just keep a handwritten note at your desk. Writing out a to do list, or better yet, updating your project management tools, is a good practice to get into daily. This will help you mentally close out your work day without physically going anywhere. Finding a ritual to wrap up your work will help you leave your work behind and enjoy the down time guilt-free. This is a good area to delegate, but keep in mind it’s always good to be in the know when it comes to the details of your projects.
Be in Constant Communication
Being a remote interior design business owner means that you have a lot of fires burning at the same time. It is vital that you answer emails, texts, phone calls, and listen to voicemails at regular intervals throughout the day. Being the lead designer means that you call all the shots, which is great when everyone has direction, but if you are not diligent about communicating then you could halt productivity for your employees and contractors.
Work With a Virtual Interior Design Assistant
At the end of the day, you can’t be expected to do it all, all the time. Working with a Virtual Design Assistant takes all the stress out adding headcount to your team. They are on-call and available for long term projects or a quick turnaround when you are in a pinch. No need to commit to a certain number of hours a week, you can send in a single task at a time or outline a full project that you would like ongoing help with. This allows you to utilize help only when you need it most.
If you need help making any part of your work day more efficient email us at contact@virtualdesignassistant.com!