Why should an interior design business owner hire a business coach?

Mar 5

Residential interior design is a luxury service. Like sellers of high-end watches, jewelry, expensive automobiles, wine, designer fashion and private jets, interior designers sell a “want”, not a “need”. People need homes. They want impeccably designed homes.

However, unlike other companies who sell luxury products & services, residential interior design is a marketplace dominated by solopreneurs & micro-sized businesses…most with almost zero formal business education.

And even as the overall residential interior design marketplace grows and grows every year, the number of residential interior design businesses that go out of business also grows and grows. And why is that?

Are poor design skills to blame? Or, is it a lack of business know-how?

We sat down with interior design business coach Marc Müskens to discuss how an interior design business coach can help residential interior designers transform their businesses.

Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Why should an interior design business owner hire a business coach?

Marc Müskens - Institute of Interior Impact: Well, when I was in the design academy, they taught me a lot of skills, but definitely not the business side, because that's the first thing.

The first thing I was missing with starting my own business was the business skills.

How do I talk with people?
How do I get the deal?
How much do I charge?
How much time can it take?

So that was a really obvious one. The second one could probably be - why you think you know yourself as an interior designer, as a personality.

But it's like there is a kind of metaphor when you are, let's visualize a jar and you are inside the jar, but you cannot read the label on the bottle. And that's most of the time. That's the case with coaching. You think you are this or you are that, with your character, with your skills or your beliefs.

But somebody needs to read the label on the outside to show you who and what you really are and what you can achieve, where you're good at, where are you specialized to the best in. So that's the one.

And, well, really, to generalize it, every successful person in the world has a coach. I never met a successful person in the world without a coach. It's with sports, with athletics, with business side, personal coaching, whatever.

They all have one.

FYI: You can check out my entire podcast interview with Marc here.