For most people who are full of creative ideas, setting themselves up as an interior designer is something of a dream. It doesn’t have to stay as a dream for too long, though, as it can be a relatively cheap business venture to set up once you decide to do so. However, if you don’t have any previous experience of being self-employed before this, you might feel a bit overwhelmed by making this change to your career. It shouldn’t be a struggle, though, especially not once you follow these great tips!
Get Experience
You need to have quite a bit of interior design experience behind you before you can start to sell your services. In fact, most customers will want to see your portfolio before they hire you. So, it’s a good idea to offer your services for free or at a very discounted rate when you are only just getting started. For instance, why not offer to decorate a friend’s room so you can add it to your portfolio. Once you have plenty of work examples, you can start to increase your prices.
Understand Your Target Clients
When it comes to interior design, there are a lot of subsections. Most businesses find that if they focus on one subsection, they won’t have as much competition to deal with. Once you’ve decided which area of interior design to cover, you then need to look at your target clients and understand more about them. You can then know what you will need to offer them and how to market yourself so that your business appeals to them.
Create Your Brand
There are quite a lot of interior design business out there, so you will certainly have some stiff competition. It’s important that you spend some time creating an attractive brand and logo that will help you stand out from the crowd. As you are obviously a very creative individual already, this shouldn’t be a problem for you!
Get Organized With Your Business Admin
Don’t forget about all the business admin, such as getting registered as a company. It may be quite boring, but it is crucial that you do it all or else you might end up in trouble! You could always use the tools and resources available from http://www.designdocs.com/ to help you put your business processes in place. You might want to get yourself set up with an accountant so that you don’t have to worry about filing your taxes yourself.
Start Marketing
Now that you are ready to go, it’s time to start attracting some clients! The easiest way to do this is to utilize social media, such as http://www.twitter.com/, Facebook, and Instagram. Setting up an email marketing newsletter and buying some advertising space in local newspapers and on interior design blogs could also be very useful for your business.
So, there you have it! That’s all that goes into setting up your very own interior design business and turning your dreams into reality!