The Hale-Williams
Entrepreneurial Test Part Three
Question 7: Do You Know What
Drives You?
As
we discussed, it’s essential that young designers find out what they do best as
early in their career as possible. If you’re truly serious about starting a
practice, you absolutely, positively have to know what you do best, because
your livelihood and reputation are both at stake.
One problem is that there are so many
different roads to explore. Another is that, once you decide on a path, there
are so many different levels of clientele you can target with your services.
You can start by identifying what segment of the industry you want to
revolutionize. Is it residential, commercial, architecture, retail, or product
design?
Once
you’ve identified your segment of choice, keep drilling, because the questions
keep getting deeper:
· If you’re into commercial
design, are you into healthcare, corporate, hospitality?
· If you’re into residential design,
are you into kitchen and bath, or lighting?
· If you’re into product
design, are you planning a furniture, textile or accessory line?
· If you’re into retail
design, is it as a shopkeeper, a retail store designer, or a furniture store
designer?
These are merely a few of the potential
questions you will have to ask yourself. There are so many possibilities for
just one life. While you are in the process of exploring the specialty segments
that may or may not work for you, don’t do anything drastic like open a
business. It would behoove you to first know what you do best. Then, after
you’ve figured it out, you can begin building a business plan that best suits
your skill set. Makes sense, right? Of course it does!
Question 8: Do You
Specialize?
With
design specialization being “so hot right now,” many of you aspiring
entrepreneurs may be moved to master one of our industry’s niche segments in
order to establish yourselves as fresh up-and-comers in the design community.
It’s a wonderful way to get a foot in the door. Don’t be afraid to specialize
early, especially if a great opportunity comes your way.
Go ahead: design a kitchen one week and a
furniture line the next. Who knows—many young designers find so much work
focusing on a particular specialty area that they are inspired to start a
specialty design business. So how does one become a multi-dimensional designer?
As you try your hand at a few of the specialty segments, don’t forget to start
developing a signature style you do well while not letting it limit your
overall scope. Instead, use your experience as a building block to the next
challenge.
Expand your mind by “doing it all,” and
feel free to be a specialist for a day in any area you like. This exercise will
help you “connect the dots” in your career by coming to new realizations about
yourself.
Say you’re a young designer who discovers
“functional design” is your “thing.” That’s great—functional design is very
“in” right now; but can you connect the dots by, for example, building your
love of function into a business plan? Start by identifying an audience that
needs functionally designed spaces.
An immediate idea would be to start an
urban residential or corporate commercial practice, due to the large role
function plays in those two segments. This is not a bad notion, but an inspired
thought would be to start a business that specializes in retirement communities
and spaces for disabled clients. It may not exactly be the most glamorous
design niche there is, but it is a profitable one that’s a great example of
connect-the-dots thinking by a designer with an eye on the prize.
While you’re in this self-exploration
phase, we hope you can appreciate how far you’ve already come. The beauty of
this industry is there are no rules. Your goal in experimenting is to layer
your skills so you and your future business aren’t one-dimensional. Then, once
you have a wide-ranging skill set, you can either choose to specialize in one
area or work in multiple design mediums.
It’s
entirely up to you; but when it comes to opening a business, you’d better get
it right the first time, or that shingle you hang out will come down awfully
quickly.
Question 9: Who Is Your
Audience?
No
matter what kind of innovative product or service you have percolating in your
design cooker, the fact is it’s not going to fly in the business world unless
quite a few people buy into it. This is particularly true in the design arena,
where it’s virtually impossible to go the undiscovered genius route. We all must
be appreciated and compensated in our time.
Every successful designer (and design
business) must have a paying audience, so who is your target market? If you are
at a loss, perhaps you should consider holding off on the whole “starting a
business” thing until you’re a bit more prepared. The bottom line is that no
savvy designer goes into business without knowing his or her audience.
Try going back to “Understanding the
Modern Client” in chapter 2, and ask yourself, If I were to start a business,
would I be selling to typical modern clients (who are young, urban, and into
functional spaces) or am I more interested in attracting affluent clients with
my “it” factor and my grand ideas? Until you know what type of client you want
to secure, you don’t know anything.
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Posted by: オテモヤン | March 28, 2010 at 05:25 PM
So inspiring and encouraging. Will share with my designer friends.
Posted by: Furniture Quest | March 27, 2010 at 08:39 PM