November Recap: Sometimes you’re The Bear…

A few month’s ago I (Shaun) shared that I had a handful of clients that I took on at Wrensted Interiors where the scope of work was only for the finish selections of home remodeling projects. After getting to know each of the clients I’ve definitely learned that there’s a reason they didn’t reach out to a designer to help them earlier in the process.

Mostly it’s that their personalities wouldn’t really work for a full-service project. There’s usually a few things they all share in common: 

• they think they know what they like (they don’t)
• they’re scared of making mistakes (they will)
• they try to save money on the wrong things (every time)
• and they don’t make fast decisions (they don’t have time for that)

Unfortunately for me, these are like making a perfect storm for any interior design project.

I’m sure you all have so many more you’d add to my list, but I did go into these projects knowing this might happen so I came in prepared…kinda. I knew these projects wouldn’t end up in my portfolio from the start, but I liked the clients and wanted to bolster my end of year billables since I’m pretty much not working the entire month of December. 

The hard part has been shifting my mindset away from my full-service projects because I haven’t been involved from the beginning. This might sound obnoxious, but I care too much. I can’t turn off the passion I have for getting everything just right, or wanting to try and fix something that was wrong with the lighting plan, or the windows, or some other thing where we’re already way past the point of no return. It was getting me really frustrated for a while. 

One client showed me a cheap $300 shower system for their primary bathroom from some no-name brand after I had shown them a $1000 system from Kohler. It seemed so wild to me that they were trying to save $700 on such an important room in their home. Even when I explained to the client that this wasn’t a wise decision for so many reasons, they still wanted to buy it. 

Later that day I was venting to a designer friend in the Marco Polo app and she helped me get to a better place. She said that this project had reached the point where I needed to switch off the part of my brain that could give them a Michelin-rated dining experience (a la The Bear on Hulu), and just serve them up the Burger King combo meal with a side of ranch that they wanted. 

I really needed to hear that. I’m still trying to help those clients, and because of my skill and expertise their projects will still be so much better than what they could have done on their own, but they aren’t going to get my full value. And to be honest, they probably wouldn’t fully appreciate it if I was able to give them everything. So I’ve put my ego aside a bit more and reminded myself that I can create and do so much more than what’s possible for these projects and that’s okay. For these clients I’m Burger King, and for my full-service clients I’m The Bear.