It's Not For Me to Say (Reprise)

The Hale-Williams Entrepreneurial Test Part Four

 

Question 10: What’s the Worst That Can Happen?

A huge factor in your decision is determining what level of risk you are comfortable taking at this point in your career. For some people, starting a business is just not realistic. Life, in the shape of a family and a mortgage, has a funny way of sidetracking some of our grandest dreams. While a young, single designer with no dependents may be more inclined to throw caution to the wind and start a design firm, a designer who is a single mother with three kids may not be in the same position because she has so much more to lose.

     As for you, make some time to deal honestly with your entrepreneurial fears and desires. Try taking a personal inventory to see where you stand. Here are a few questions that will help you to determine whether you’re in the right place to start your own business:

·       What are your responsibilities? Do you have a family, kids, or a mortgage?

·       How is your credit? Do you already have significant debt?

·       What’s the worst that can happen if you fail?

·       Do you have a backup plan?

·       Are you going to “die” if you don’t start your own practice?

·       Do you plan to run your business as a business or a hobby?

·       Are you self-motivated? Can you start a job and finish it?

Question 11: Do You Have Clarity of Thought?

One of the keys to running any successful business is being able to maintain a clear thought process at all times. This may look easy from the sidelines, but in the heat of battle you will find it harder than you think.

     Clarity of mind (and its partner, clarity of action) will help you at every stop in your design career. From objectively seeing when a job has been done right or wrong, to knowing when to bring in outside help to improve business, a sharp eye and a sharper mind are two crucial designer attributes that will never, ever go out of style.

     However, contrary to what some of your professors may have told you, success isn’t determined by how many attributes you have on your dossier. It is more mysterious than that. Of all the intangible factors out there, the four that will weigh heaviest in the early part of your career are: staying sharp, being resourceful, playing to your strengths, and knowing how to compensate for your weaknesses. You need to know your game better than anyone else does.

     How do you go about doing all this? Begin by developing the clarity of mind to see what you do well and what needs work. Once you know the holes in your game, you can address them through self-improvement or by partnering with other design specialists who are experts in areas that you are not.

     For example, if you find you aren’t very good at organization, partner with someone who is. If you can see you’re having problems with color, bring in a color specialist. If you’re a control freak, learn to delegate. This is, frankly, the reason why so many designers go the partnership route. Smart designers are aware of their limitations before starting their practice. They know that, to succeed, their business must be able to do it all, even if they cannot do it all individually.

Question 12: Got Any Street Smarts, Wise Guy?

Say you’re a gutsy designer determined to go into business right out of school. That’s fantastic, but we hope you weren’t brainwashed by your professors into thinking that your business is going to be run “by the book,” because here in the real world it usually doesn’t work that way.

     Even if doing it “by the books” has gotten you everywhere in your nascent career, when it comes to becoming a professional designer, an over-reliance on education can lead to your demise. At least in our industry, strict academic types tend to be stiff in spirit and unable to create, improvise, and invent on the fly—all fairly giant factors in what we do. Does this mean these designers weren’t talented when they entered school, or did education somehow play a part in their creative demise? It may be a combination of the two as, in this day and age, it’s all too easy for anyone to enroll in a design school, pass a series of tests, and still not be any closer to being a qualified or even talented designer. There is a reason why some of the greatest designers never went to design school. A tightly wound internal curriculum can kill a designer’s creative spark.

     We aren’t saying education is useless. A solid foundation is important in any career. But, let’s face it, design degrees can be very misleading. And there are quite a few nasty habits that some students learn in design school. Let’s just say that, when it comes to the practice of interior design, often what happens in the classroom should stay in the classroom.

     If you want an example, take a look at the architecture industry. They’ve gone down this slippery slope. The people you meet in architecture today often are conventional and unimaginative. Because of the industry’s tightly bound curriculum, you meet many young architects who have had all their creativity sucked out of them. They simply learned a regimented profession by rote over five years and passed the test. How is this a paradigm for success? The textbook answer: it isn’t.