First Office

     Your home is the logical place to set up a part-time business—but first, find out if your community is zoned for home-based businesses.

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Many communities restrict or prohibit:

💢 Creating nuisances (noise, odors, waste)

💢 Doing business outside

💢 Modifying a home’s structure or adding signage

💢 Creating traffic

💢 Taking up excessive street parking with delivery, customer and employee vehicles, or commercial vehicles

Stay in your neighbors’ good graces by keeping your business as unobtrusive as possible. 

Find Your Space

Take the time to create a home office space that fits your needs.

💫 Do you need to meet with clients at home? You’ll want a separate office (such as a converted garage or guest house) or a room with an outside entrance.

💫 Do you need to make products or package items for shipping? You’ll need plenty of space to spread out, or you may want to consider having your shipping services outsourced to a shipping expert if your product category or volume requires it.

💫 Do you need inventory or materials? Make sure you have a secure space to store them.

If you don’t have a spare room, create a separate workspace by curtaining off a corner of the bedroom, screening off a spot in the dining area or buying a desk armoire for your business.

Separating business and personal space helps you and your family see your startup as a real business, not just a hobby.

Business Equipment and Services

You probably have some of the equipment you’ll need to run your business, such as a computer, printer and smartphone. It’s best to have a computer just for your business so you don’t risk your kids accidentally deleting key client files. An all-in-one printer that scans, copies and faxes is an affordable printing solution. Or, save on startup costs by handling printing, faxing and copying at a business service center.

If your business requires shipping products to customers, using a business service center such as The UPS Store to professionally package, weigh, ship and track your shipments ensures your shipments arrive on time and in good condition.

MEET AND GREET

If you need to meet with clients, but don’t have space for a separate office at home, search online for executive suites or co-working spaces where you can rent conference rooms on as as-needed basis.

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Your First Customers

 You’re raring to go—all you need are customers. 

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How to find them? Try the following tactics:

💟 Get a business website:

Keep it simple with all-inone website packages that include a domain name, hosting services and design templates. Popular options include GoDaddy, Web.com and Yahoo Small Business. If you’re starting an ecommerce business, look for a website builder specializing in ecommerce, such as Shopify, Volusion or 3DCart.

💟 Use word-of-mouth: Start your search for customers by asking friends, family members and acquaintances for leads. You never know who might introduce you to your first customer.

💟 Publicize it: Tapping into existing networks of bloggers who speak to your target audience, making connections, and offering content or services such as writing guest blog posts can align you with your target audience.

💟 Get social: Use social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest to get your target market’s attention. Create a social account for your business, and post useful content providing information, advice or entertainment.

                Interact with followers regularly, and link posts to your business website so followers can learn more about your business. 

Advertise: If your business targets local customers, use print ads in community newspapers, local directories or local magazines to reach them. You can also get customers by advertising on websites your target market frequents. For instance, a children’s tutoring service can advertise on websites targeting moms of school-aged children, limiting the ads to moms in nearby ZIP codes.

💟 The direct approach: Try a direct mail campaign to reach your neighbors. The UPS Store offers a service called Every Door Direct Mail. Simply choose an area in which you want to advertise, and The UPS Store will handle the logistics of having your direct mail advertising piece delivered to every address in that neighborhood. It’s an affordable option to reach people in your area.

Collect customer data: Save time and market more effectively by maintaining data about prospects and customers. Customer relationship management (CRM) tools like Really Simple Systems, ZohoCRM and ContactMe let you track every interaction, set reminders and schedule follow-up contacts.

Market with email: Ask prospects and customers to sign up for email messages from your business. (Be sure to comply with the FTC’s CAN-SPAM laws.) Email marketing service providers such as Campaigner, Constant Contact and iContact let you create and send professional-looking emails.

💥 Offer deals: Offering discounts for your first customers can build a foundation for attracting more. This works especially well for businesses that provide recurring services. For example, a lawn-care service could offer six months’ services for the price of three.

💥 Become an expert: Get attention from prospects by building a reputation as an expert in your industry. Offer to speak to local groups your target customers belong to about topics relevant to your business.

💥 Buddy up: Form alliances with established small businesses to help each other get customers. For example, if you have a dog grooming business, you could partner with a local dog-sitter to refer clients to each other.

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Exploring Style Sourcebook

Have you heard about Style Sourcebook yet?

I first stumbled upon Style Sourcebook last year… on a slow day at work. It's entirely FREE.

Style Sourcebook is a product sourcing and mood board community to help you renovate and decorate.

                                                    https://stylesourcebook.com.au/

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So, what is Style Sourcebook?

Well it is an Australian website (head to www.stylesourcebook.com.au) that allows you to develop style and mood boards from scratch. According to its own website, Style Sourcebook can be described as “a product sourcing and mood board community to help you renovate and decorate”.

Style Sourcebook provides functionality on many levels. For someone such as myself who is predominantly focused on developing style boards for personal usage, it is a great blank canvas to see how room layouts and colors will or won’t work in the real world (saves on money and all that effort moving furniture around).

 How does it work?

Starting with a blank page, you can either upload your own images or alternatively you can upload from the library bank of furniture, homewares and home décor options already loaded onto the site. Although the library appears to include furniture from predominantly Australian-based and recognized companies, it is very extensive and includes categories such as Bedroom, Bathroom, Décor, Living, Outdoors, Walls and Floors. Within each of these are even more sub-categories.

Even if you prefer to use your own photos, Style Sourcebook is still a great resource.  Instead of searching across the existing categories, all you need to do is upload your images via the Upload Images tab. Keep in mind that these images are then saved, and can be used later via Saved Images (you can also save images from the database and access them here later as well).

If it all seems to much and you just want someone else to show you the way, then Style Sourcebook still has you covered via its Mood Boards tab. This part of the website allows you to view style boards created by others, categorized by Popularity or Recently Uploaded. You can also use the search function if you have a particular theme you want to look for, say Teal and Purple Bedroom.

Finally, Style Sourcebook allows you to create an account as either a private person or as a Designer. Even if you create a personal account, the site still allows you to use a business name, register a business email and website etc., but does not seem to allow you to fully market yourself as an interior designer. To do that, it seems that you need to register as a Designer. To my mind, this aspect of the site reminds me a little bit of www.houzz.com . Either way, if you like the look of a particular style board creator, you can search for them on the site and peruse their work at your leisure…

 

How does Style Sourcebook compare to Canva?

Now that I am more familiar with both, I can see that they serve different functions. Whereas I find Canva great for graphic design work more generally (logos, insta posts etc) I find it less helpful when working on design projects. Because of the template structure of Canva, I tend to use Canva mood boards more for picture collages or color inspo boards.

However, if I am trying to style a room, defining not just colors, but furniture types and placement, then I would suggest trying Style Sourcebook in the first instance. The blank template structure means that you can place pictures wherever you want on the page, rather than within a set template format. However, I do think that they provide differentiated products and you should first consider what it is that you want to produce before deciding on which to use.

 

Get in touch!

As always, if you have any comments or questions. get in touch! Comments section is below and email and socials are at the top of the page :-)

Disclaimer

I have absolutely no affiliation with any of the companies or websites mentioned in this blog. This blog is based on my personal observations alone. I don’t pretend to be an expert - just a lover of all things interior design related including great websites.

 

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STEP BY STEP HOW TO RUN A DESIGN CLIENT KICK OFF MEETING

 

The kickoff meeting is an essential step in the design process as it allows the project team to establish clear communication, set expectations and gather key information from the client.

 

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The kickoff meeting generally fits into my workflow here:

💫initial (paid) design consultation

💫preparation of fee proposal

💫acceptance of proposal and contract signing

💫send our client’s welcome pack and on-boarding client questionnaire

💫existing conditions survey

💫run kick off meeting

***you can get templates for these documents in my shop if you need them...

1.SCHEDULE FOR THE KICKOFF MEETING

• Decide who needs to be at the kickoff meeting
• Identify a suitable date, time and location for the meeting
• Location could be your office or the client’s home or site
• Notify all relevant parties of the date and time, including the client, design team members and any other stake holding
• Give plenty of notice
• Ensure availability of necessary resources, such as meeting room, presentation equipment and/ or material

2.PREPARE MEETING AGENDA AND MATERIALS

• Develop a meeting agenda that includes the key topics to be discussed

• Send out the agenda prior to the meeting
• See an example agenda on next slide
• Gather all relevant project information, including client requirements, project brief/scope, site plans and any other relevant documentation
• Prepare visual aids, such as presentations or mood board, to facilitate discussions and clarify the process
• Make sure someone is responsible for taking notes during the meeting or use Otter AI to do this for you

 

 

3.RUN THE MEETING

• Begin the meeting by introducing all attendees and explaining the purpose of the kickoff meeting
• During the meeting make sure to cover:

    -the project overview, including the project goals, objectives and scope

    -the project timeline

    -the client’s vision, preferences, and specific requirements for the project

    -clarification on any ambiguous or unclear information provided by the client

    -initial design ideas and preferences

    -any questions or concerns raised by the client

• Document key decisions, action items and next steps

 

4.FOLLOW UP ACTIONS

• Compile meeting notes, capturing all important discussions, decisions and action items or Otter AI can create a transcription for you
• Add the transcription to ChapGPT to generate a meeting summary, action items and next step
• Assign responsibilities for each action item and set deadlines for completion
• Share the meeting summary with all attendees
• Ensure ongoing communication with the client, addressing any additional questions or requirements that may arise after the kickoff meeting

 

 

 EXAMPLE MEETING AGENDA

💫 Introduction and welcome

💫 Review of project objectives and scope

💫. Presentation of project brief and client requirements

💫 Discussion of site plans and existing conditions

💫 Clarification of project timeline and milestones

💫 Explanation of the design process and designer vs contractor vs client roles

💫 Open discussion and Q&A

💫 Next steps and action items

 

Read in my blog more information by each step :💥 www.hobbytosmallbusiness.blogspot.com
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