You just got your first project, great! You are feeling excited and nervous at the same time. You know how to design, but what about the other factors that determine a successful project? Although we learn the design process at college/university, working in real life, with real clients, is quite different.

Each project will come with different budget requirements, drawings, and expectations, but if you take note of what we have learned from our first projects, it will help you a great deal in avoiding unnecessary mistakes.

1. Get a contract: A contract is incredibly important to ensure expectations are clear. A contract will outline your working hours, fees, overtime fees, timelines, and scope of work. It will protect your interests and give your client necessary insight that avoids disagreement. For instance, we did not have a legal contract when we took on our first project. We ended up working many overtime hours, going on unpaid furniture shopping trips, and completing unpaid revisions. We could not charge our client for all this as we did not have a document that outlined this clearly from the beginning, and if we had suddenly charged them, they would have been unhappy.
2. Do not give away your suppliers: Approaching suppliers is easy. Send an email or call each supplier, introduce yourself, explain the project you are working on and what services you may require from them. Mention that you would like to work with them long-term. Be polite and professional. Most importantly, avoid giving away your supplier’s name/details to your client. We made this mistake, which led our client to speaking with our supplier directly and pushing us out. Generally, your suppliers will let you know when that has happened and will not give away sensitive information such as your commission and original cost. However, it is best to avoid this situation entirely.
3. Commission: This is a percentage that you add to quotes from suppliers. Generally, 15-25% is fair.
4. Do benefit your clients with trade discounts, but within reason: We were so eager to please, that we gave our clients the full trade discount in the first few purchases. We noticed this was hurting our business (a business has lots of running costs), and that we should benefit from this too. How much you want to give away is up to you. For example, where we have a 40% trade discount, we give our client 20%. Where we have 20%, we give away 10%.
5. Be clear and honest about timelines: If you are working alone, or you are a small team, you need to be honest with yourselves about how much work you can get done within a specific time. It is better that you give a longer timeline to your client that is true to your capabilities, rather than causing delays with misleading timelines, which will result in unhappy clients and contractors.
6. Keep a record of all correspondence in writing: All correspondence should be via email. Any phone calls should be followed up by a written email outlining what has been discussed/agreed upon. On more than one occasion, we have been in a situation where we needed to correct our clients/suppliers by providing evidence of what was agreed on via email. This will protect your interests.
7. All approvals should be in writing: Do not make any orders, send over any drawings to contractors or make any changes without first getting your client’s approval in writing. Send an email over stating clearly what you are sending, ordering, and if the client is happy to move forward. Once you receive the approval, you can go ahead.
8. Your fee: This can be an hourly rate or a percentage of the budget. Whatever your fee is, provide your client with a breakdown of what this fee covers. For example, how many drawings, revisions, 3D renders, whether it includes an FFE, project management and so on. The clearer you are, the smoother the process.
9. Before and after pictures: Remember to take before and after pictures for your portfolio and social media accounts. Take videos and progress pictures to add to your stories on Instagram.
10. Ask your clients for a testimonial and constructive feedback: Just before project completion, kindly ask your client for a testimonial and any constructive feedback that could serve you. Criticism is good, it will help you better your services and way of work.

We hope the above will help you start your first project with confidence. Remember, it’s okay to make mistakes. The most important thing is to quickly find a solution and move on. This skill will develop progressively as your experience increases. We wish you luck and success!