Avoiding Nightmare Interior Design Clients
Nightmare interior design clients can be a fact of life for some of us. Whether we attract the crazy bitch who has her entire home pinned to her dream home board on Pinterest and just needs you to be her data-entry designer or the dummy that won't ever let you have control of the project. These people are everywhere but just because they may be a nightmare for you doesn't mean they won't be a dream client for someone else.
We can all agree on the basics. You don't want to work with someone who doesn't pay you or values your expertise and creativity. But if you've ever read some of the advice out there it will tell you to avoid working with engineers, overly curious people, people who can't articulate what they want and those who can't make a decision.
Depending on your personality, you may not gel with those people. It may also be that you could be able to work with these people if you understood them a bit better.
I find it fascinating that no one brings up the fact that interior design peeps should be studying the different types of people as a valid solution to this problem.
This is a people business, but too often the "experts" want to rely on basic, 3D solutions that don't address the core issue.
How many times have you heard other designers say that they became great friends with their clients? They go to their client’s parties, they go on vacation together and then here you are saying, “My client’s a bitch, so there’s that?”
Maybe you’ve even tried to research who you think your ideal client is and found some articles that state you need to stay away from engineers because they are too picky.
If you understood that the engineers are smart people that love hard facts and research you would also know that they have likely done a lot of the research on their project before even contacting you. They most likely want to work together with you to co-create the design and look to you to be a resource. They fear being led astray, which is why some people may consider them picky.
Or maybe you should flat out avoid the indecisive clients because holy hell, who wants to be stuck in the land of wishy-washy what the fuck?
But if you knew that instead, it isn't that they are trying to be difficult pains in your ass. but that they just want a simple solution to their design problem and if given too many options they become overwhelmed because they could possibly make the wrong decision - and that right there will ruin their fantasies of a utopian life.
Yet, if you never research the personalities of the people that you're meant to serve, and then incorporate that knowledge into how you run your business you may end up in the shit cycle of always attracting nightmare interior design clients.
Naturally, we want to work with people like us. I don't mean exactly like us because frankly, I wouldn't be in business in I was only focused on finding clients who like the macabre, the metaphysical and reality TV. That number wouldn't be smaller than 90s pop star's IQ.
What we term nightmare interior design clients comes back to digging into who we really are, where our strengths lie and who we will work best with aka the ideal client.
The bitch about the "ideal client" is that we've seen a bunch of different exercises to help us identify who these people are and they never seem to get us any closer to people that we really want to work with. And when we try to dig deeper into who this unicorn of a client is, we're stuck.
Nightmare interior design clients are only a reality for your business if you don't have a clue who they really are and do a bad job at making them self-select themselves out of your orbit.
Now, if you've had a dream client, you can think back and figure out why they were so awesome. If you've never had a dream client, and we've all been there, you feel like you're doomed to walk the earth for eons until you get one. And running your business waiting on that is the pits.
The Moon Is Your Guiding Light
Wait, what?
Everything that you want to know about your dream client, even if you've never had one, is found within your moon sign. The moon sign, in your natal chart, will tell you what qualities you want in your dream clients.
If your Moon sign is Virgo, you're going to love the engineer type clients because both of you like to do research, crunch the numbers and analyze all of the data. You get them and know that they aren't trying to be picky fucks, but it's just who they are.
If your moon sign is in Pisces, you know that your clients are going to be big into transformation and we're not just talking big renovations. They also want a side of woo-woo thrown in, too.
If your moon sign is in Sagittarius, you know that your clients love eDesign because it's going to be an adventure for them to find all the things for their project. And if you've designed a space like none other that allows them to get some meditation time in for self-reflection, they'll dig that, too.
Your birth chart is your marketing plan for your business and when you understand how to extract the relevant information, things are going to get a lot easier. You'll understand your strengths and weaknesses. You'll know who you should be working with and who will be the nightmare interior design client that you should avoid.
Avoiding Nightmare Interior Design Clients Doesn't Have To Be So Hard
Listen, you're not going to turn into Nostradamus and make weird predictions about the world that no one can ever figure out until AFTER something happens. That is not what this is about.
I'm talking about the fact that you probably know some of the traits of yourself and find that sometimes your horoscope rings true. And sometimes it doesn't. And that is where you'll need to dig into your natal chart.
Your natal chart has a lot of information on who you will work best with. And while that is amazing on its own, if you also knew what your dream clients valued, feared and what they are seeking in life you could leapfrog ahead and never do another ideal client avatar exercise again.
Avoiding nightmare interior design clients doesn't have to be like tiptoeing through a minefield. The experience of discovering who your dream clients are, what your life purpose is (also in your natal chart) can really help you get clarity around who your design business is meant to serve.
Imagine, being able to know what your dream clients want, how they want to work with you and know how you should be showing up in this world without having to guess again? Basically, you'll be running your dream business and working with your dream clients once you know how to use all of that information to create your own personal brand.
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.
Hola! I'm Alycia Wicker and I help online interior designers grow their business.
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