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March 24, 2010

It's Not For Me to Say (Reprise)

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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