Live Seminar! Essential Systems & Processes from High Point Market

As I head to High Point Market Spring 2024, I thought I would play some of a seminar that I taught LIVE at the fabulous Universal Furniture Learning Center about a year and a half ago. The information STILL stands trust me. It's all about Essential Systems and Processes, what those are and how to set them up.

It's actually a portion of a course that I teach within my Design Success Academy! So you're getting a bit of a course for free! We all need processes defined, but do we really take the time do so? I'm here to help with an easy 3 step process for you!

In this teaching episode you will learn:
* How To Create Your Processes
* The Actual Processes I Use In My Company
* Why They Work
* How To Use Processes With Our Trades & Vendors
* How To Use Processes With Our Internal Team
* How To Use Processes With Our Clients

If you are interested in the download mentioned, you can grab it HERE: https://members.designsuccessacademy.com/freesystemsdownload

What if you could finally create the interior design business of your dreams while consistently making 6 figures and doing it all with no stress? Join Design Business Fast Track today to make your Design Business dreams a reality!

www.designbusinessfasttrack.com

For all things John: www.johnmcclain.co
For more information on my online Courses & Coaching Program for Interior Designers, visit: https://designsuccessacademy.com/
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Transcript

Hey, y'all, you're listening to the designer within podcast episode number 42.  

 I'm John McClain and welcome to the designer within podcast, the business minded podcast created for creative entrepreneurs by a creative entrepreneur. That's me. I know firsthand the challenges, but also the victories that can come with our careers. And I'm here to sip and spill the tea with you. It's time to dive deep within yourself and redesign your own business and your life from the inside out.

Together we will uncover secrets and share valuable insights. So prepare for a transformative experience, my friend, because it's time to unleash the designer within.

Hey friends. Welcome to another episode of the designer within podcast. If you are listening in real time, which is April of 2024. It is time for high point Marquette. Yes, it is. And high point market means a lots of fun things happening. And if you are going to high point market, I would live. I live to see you there. 

So you can find me as usual running around high point market. Like a crazy man. And doing lots of panels, lots of great speaking engagements. And I just wanted to, again, review those for you. If you are listening to this in real time, high point market begins on April 12th and goes through the following week. 

So here is where you can find me at high point market. And I would love to see you there. Saturday, April 13th at 4:00 PM. At universal learning center, you can find me. I will be doing a one hour. Seminar on my own. This is something that I do every year At the fabulous learning center at universal furniture, they do a great job of setting this up. 

And this panel is really cool. It's talking about how you can upsell your client that you already have. And I love this topic because I feel like we don't do a good job of this. We already have a client that loves us and that we love working with. And this is just finding those opportunities to really make more profit from those clients. 

So that Saturday. April 13th at 4:00 PM at the universal furniture learning center. Sunday is a super duper busy day for me. And I hope I can find you at one of these panels as well, Starting at 10:00 AM at hooker furniture on Sunday, April 14th. 

And this is talking about how to use technology in your firm. This is a great panel sponsored by IDs and my DOMA studio, following that I'm heading over to Fairfield chair and this panel is all about procurement. This is a particularly great panel because we will be talking about how to get procurement processes set up how that looks within your company. 

And we're talking with lots of great companies who do that already. Lots. Of great design firms. And that is at Fairfield chair Sunday at 11:30 AM Sunday at 1:00 PM at the antiques and design center is a panel that I will be moderating as well about how to work antiques into your design process. And if you do work antiques into your design process, how to basically make profit from those how to streamline that process. 

Lots and lots of great tips from the panelists on this panel. you will love that. Following that panel, the antiques and design center is hosting a book signing for me, for my book, the designer within. So Sunday, April 14th at 2:00 PM at the antiques and design center is a book signing for my book, the designer within at the same time, I want you to come out. 

Yes, you, the listener of this podcast, we are also hosting a podcast at meetup. So if you want to come out and say hi to me, meet other listeners of the. Podcasts and just say, hello, you do not have to purchase the book of course, but just come out and say hi and give me a hug. And let me know that you listened to the podcast. 

I love to meet people who are benefiting from this podcast and who get great results from it. So just come out and say hi, that is 2:00 PM, April 14th at the antiques and design center. And by the way, that's in the market square. Uh, building and that is 3, 1 6 west commerce avenue on their ground level. So Sunday, April 14th, 2:00 PM for my book signing and the podcast meet up and last, but certainly not least at 4:30 PM on Sunday at Calco eliding. 

I love this topic. It is exploring color psychology and lighting design. I love this because Calco lighting, first of all, does a great job with their panels. And this is hosted by my friend, Diane at furniture lighting and the core who does a great job of moderating as well. And I think the topic is just so great. 

So come on out at 4:30 PM at Calco lighting. And that is in the  C building floor number two Sunday, April 14th at 4:30 PM. So as I said, lots of stuff going on, you can find out these. I know it was a lot to remember, but if you want to check on the spot at high point, I know how it gets. It's hard to remember everything when you're running around high point and you're going from vendor to vendor and thing to thing and talk to a party there, cocktail party. 

So. If you're at high point and you're like, where is John talking about? He was going to be just go to my Instagram and that's the easiest way. And you can go to the bio and it says all the links and you can find out where I will be with the links in my bio, on Instagram or on my website, John mcclain.co. 

And there is on the very front page, a place where you can find out where I will be at high point market. So speaking of high point market, I thought, wow, let's do something different this time for the podcast. Podcast let's actually let those of you who could not possibly attend. One of my speaking panels at high point market, let's let you in on that. 

And I decided to pull from the archives. One of the seminars that I have led at universal furniture. And I, again, love speaking at universal furniture. They do a. Bang up job with their learning center. If you haven't been to one of their Panel presentations that they have there. 

They're just so, so good at it. It is just the perfect learning environment and they just have a great, great place for it. There. So please plan to attend mine or anybody's. There are all of them. They're really great. 



and the presentation that I decided to pull was the very, very first one that I did for universal about a year and a half, two years, two years ago now, I guess, actually, and it was all about processes. 

And basically what I did. You guys, if you've ever heard me speak or seen one of my presentations, I don't hold back. I don't really Sturt the topic. I really go into the topic, which is what I love to do. I'm not one of these people who've circled the airport. I really go in for the landing. 

And I really like to give you the details of it. And that is exactly what this presentation is. I take my courses that I teach my students who pay for them actually. And I pull out specific things from those courses as much as I can teach in that hour long timeframe. And I teach it and that's exactly what this is. 

So you're really getting insider information and you're getting an inside knowledge of what I teach students in my program. And even a bit more because I tend to, you know, kind of talk off the cuff and go into more specific stories about what happens to me in my life. And so I wanted to share that with you today and give you a little sample of what happens at high point market. 

For those of you who have never gone, or maybe you just want a refresher, if you have gone before, this is just a great topic. Processors are always the most popular topic to discuss it is the number one download on my podcast. Actually, anytime I speak about processes. 

It is what people are most interested in. So I felt this would be a great thing to bring up and remember, this was recorded live at high point market It was such a big, big group of people. Standing room only you sitting in the floor. Uh, all the chairs were full. 

All the walls were lined with people. This is shows the power of processes and how much people really want to hone in on those processes. And I do mention a download. At the end of the seminar. And I do have that download available for you as well. So in the nodes of wherever you're listening to your podcast, I'm not sure if you guys are aware, but there is a notes section of the podcast and you can actually go into the notes section and there is a download. 

There, there is links inside of that and all the things. So if I have a guest on, I will put links for that person in there, but for any download that I offer you, it will also be in the downloads area, in the notes section of this. Podcast. So head there. I have that download for you. I don't want you to miss out on that. 

The other thing I wanted to mention is that I kind of leave out the opening part of this. Particular seminar, because I talk about a story that you guys have heard already. It is the story on the episode. One of my podcasts, where I talk about what led me to having processes and having systems. So I didn't want to repeat myself there and you will join the seminar. 

You will join this presentation after I had already gone through this story for these people. So at this point, they have already heard that story a much more concise version of that. At story, I might add probably like a, I don't know, maybe an eight or 10 minute version of that story, not the version that you got on the podcast, but at least they have heard it and they understand the reasoning why I created these processes. 

So I just wanted you to know you're joining this a bit mid stream, and that is what I keep referring back to in this presentation with the people in the audience of what I'm referring to of the reasoning, why behind that. So I just wanted to give you a little premise for that, but that being said, I want you to sit back, relax and enjoy this presentation because it truly, truly, truly does have so much information in it. And again, if you went to it and you want to refresh or if you didn't get a chance to go to it and you just want to hear the information, here you go. 

And by the way, if you want to see the actual video presentation of this, you can head to universal learning center on their YouTube page. They have the actual videos of all of their presentations, of all the presenters that they've ever done. It is such a wonderful collection of learning opportunities on their YouTube page. 

So you can. Head there and find out all of the great presentations right there, all catalog for you is such a great, great resource. So thank you. Universal learning center for just giving the opportunity for me to give the information. And for everyone else to get that information too. So without further ado.

 📍 Let's go to high point market and let's learn about processes.    📍  📍 

That pivotal moment. Is why I'm standing in front of you today. Why I can't even talk about it because it was such a  moment in my life. But I say that because I don't want anyone else to ever experience what I experienced. I don't want anyone else to have those feelings. I don't want anyone else to feel like.

They are less than or not worth it because we all work so hard for our clients, and they can sometimes take advantage of us if we don't have those systems and processes in place. So that that pivotal moment is why I'm standing in front of you today. Why? I'm sharing all this information that I feel will hopefully. 

Help all of us as designers and be a more inclusive community, share information, share our good stories, share our bad stories, because I know we all have bad stories. I've heard some from a lot of you, but that led to where we are now for systems and processes. So I'm going to share some of those systems and processes.

All the things that I started doing that day that basically turned me around and made me realize wasn't on the right path.  All right, so here's our goals. We're going to. Just define what systems and processes are, why we need them, and which systems and processes are essential for us as interior designers.

I can't cover them all in this short time span, but I'm going to give you the ones that I feel are very important for us to know and to make sure that we actually follow through with. And lastly, how to implement those into your business.  Some of it's going to be, I know, listen, we're designers. We want pretty things.

Some of it's not so pretty and some of it's not so much fun, but just stay with me because I promise you, it will help you. This is me. Who cares? Um, I'm an interior designer. I have an office in Orlando and in LA where I live. Um, I am a business coach now for you guys. I literally. Love sharing my information.

I'm a tech nerd learning it. And  first of all, has everyone, I know why you've been, is everyone familiar with systems and processes in general? And I know a lot of us probably have them in our head, but do we have signing after this, uh, as interior designers, I can't cover them all in this short time, I know.

Listen, we're designers. We're going to be, I know. Listen, we're designers. We want pretty things. Some of it's not so pretty and some of it's not so much fun, but just stay with me. Because I promise you, it will help you. This is me. Who cares? Um, I am an interior designer. I have an office in Orlando and in LA where I live.

Um, I am a business coach now for you guys. I literally love sharing my information. I'm a tech nerd. I started my own business courses called the designer within, which is also the name of my book, which we're going to be signing after this. Uh, haven't met a cupcake that I didn't like Dolly Parton fan boy.

Totally. This is Lily custom art that I had made for me.  In there somewhere is a little 13 year old John McClain dressed as Dolly Parton at his dad's company picnic. So, there you go.  Favorite child, I'm sure.  Uh,  but I love her because she, she knows, she's so good at life and she's so good at business and you just learn so much from people without even realizing that you're learning it.

And, most importantly, I'm an advocate for all of you because I am you, you are me, we are we, we're all here. Like, I, I know what you're going through, I know what you've been through. If anybody has a story that surpasses mine, I'd like to hear it.  Actually I wouldn't, we'll have that over cocktails maybe.  So let's talk about what and why.

So,  First of all, has everyone, is everyone familiar with systems and processes in general? And I know a lot of us probably have them in our head, but do we have them in our business written out in a format that everyone can understand? So systems are the overall deliverable. They're the thing, they're the bigger picture that delivers all of the processes inside of it, right?

So there's so many systems. But that system is broken down step by step by step by step by step with all the processes underneath that. So that's kind of the way to understand that. And by the way, at the end, I'm going to give you a link and you can download the presentation. So you can take notes if you want, but you can have it all at the end. 

Processes are all the related sequential. That's very important to remember because they do go in a certain order. So there are the sequential activities inside of the system. that make it all work and function. So, systems, the bigger picture, processes are the little bitty parts inside of that. Okay?  We all good?

Okay. Alright. So,  this is probably what my systems and processes look like when I was working for this other client. Uh, just throwing them all together, throwing them in the funnel, seeing what happened, oh yes, onboarding, oh yes, shopping, oh yes, returning this, oh yes, You know, talking to this trades person, all jumbled together in one big mess.

And that never works because there's no systematic process. Order to any of those things, you get an unhappy client, you get a home. That's probably not complete. You get a home. That's probably over the investment amount that the client had agreed to and most importantly, you probably don't make any money when you're doing these things.

And to me, this is what it feels like. It feels like I am on a bumper cars and all the systems are really, I'm bumping into my team members and I'm bumping into everybody else on the project and we nobody's getting anywhere. Because we're literally just a bunch of bumper cars seeing how it turns out. So there's no order to that, but  here are  the way that I define the important systems that you should have within your company.

So I have a little trio that I call them here.  So it's my client systems, my trades and vendor systems, and then my team and internal systems. And I've, I've analyzed, I've analyzed my company upside down, inside out, every which way I've done every, every autopsy of every project. I've done every single imaginable way that you can analyze how a company works.

Probably so much that my team is sick of hearing me ask them, well, do you think we should do this better? Can we improve on this? But once I looked at everything and realized exactly,  These are the categories that everything fell into. And once I realized that, It just, it was like a clear picture for me.

I can understand. Okay. Yeah, that process goes here and that one is a client one and that one is a trade and vendor one. And I put trades and vendor in the same grouping because I feel like in a way they're supplying something to us and we should in return be supplying an orderly process to them.  And https: otter.

ai  Okay, been there, done that all the above. So this will help all of us because  whether you have 50 people or whether you have just yourself, you're going to want to keep everything in order and the process is organized.  Okay, so this lovely little funnel is so pretty, right? It seems pretty stuff for us.

It's client systems, trade and vendor systems, your team and internal systems. When you put all of those Into the funnel and create processes for those. You have a happy client. The project turns out beautifully and you're not stressed as much promise you that. And oh, my God, you can actually make money concept, right?

We can make money from what we do. So I have found that this is what has  saved me. From becoming a crazy, crazy maniac and doing that whole bumper car thing that we were just looking at. Okay, here are so you guys can see  here are some of the essential ones that I feel are important for for clients.

Right? And again, I'll give you all of this, but I just want to touch on these now onboarding. We're going to talk about that in detail in just a second. Um, how do you on board the client? You're going to be surprised at how many steps there are and onboarding a client. It's not just. Hi, client. Let's come over and sign the agreement.

No, no, no, no, no. There's multiple pages. I'm going to share with you on that. Uh, communication. How do you communicate with your client? What's your format? Is it email? Is it text? You know, how do you do all of these things is and that needs to be documented. Um, your agreement. This client, I didn't tell you guys this, this client that I had, I didn't have an agreement with them either.

It was like a handshake and a smile,  you know,  never works. Um,  my, my agreement now you should know is 22 pages. Thank you very much.  It covers everything from, you know, I don't want to hear what you have to say it before eight in the morning to, you know, if your dog runs out, that's your responsibility. So I, I think I have it all covered now, but, um, yeah.

And then project schedule and timeline. I think this one's really important because it really does keep the entire project in line. We use something called a sauna. I'm sure a lot of you know what that is. If not, we're going to talk about that in a minute as well, but I don't care how you organize. Your systems and processes, but you should organize them and it's it's not fun work.

It's not easy work, but it will be so so worth it. Um, presentations. That's just basically what it is. Like, how does that presentation process work? Do you have 1? Do you have 2? If they want to do revisions? What does that look like? All of the things sourcing?  I mean, that's that's a detailed 1 in and of itself, right?

Procurement, all those things. Product approvals, um, if you don't have the right product approvals, you're going to lose your shirt. So a lot of these things in this specific process will help you if there is the time when you are being litigated or there is some sort of controversy with your client. A lot of your processes will keep those things from escalating to the point of bringing armed guards with you to an installation.

Client  acknowledgements. What I mean by this is, let's say you have a wall covering and it is a natural.  The scenes are going to show or if it's a natural stone, it's not going to be exactly what they saw on the showroom floor. You should have a system and a process in place to protect yourself. If that client comes back and has some sort of issue with that.

And that's just not as easy as saying, you know, here's a form. It's educating the client as well. So we have multiple steps in our process that educate the client on what they're about to purchase. And then they approve that based on what we require them to sign off on.  Um, product returns, conflicts, hopefully they don't happen, but we know that they could.

Billing conflicts, why am I charged this much? You didn't, took you that long to pick out a sofa. You know, that sort of thing. Scheduling conflicts, um, this is if there is someone who, you know, doesn't show up on the job site. All those fun things. Project revisions, how do you handle your project revisions.

Scope increase scope creep. You might know it as how do you handle that? What's your system in place for that? We have. In my course, I have over a hundred emails that are pre written that I just give to my team and anyone else that you can just plug and play, and it's like, if this client has this question, plug this in.

So, it's, there's very rarely anything that I've heard or not heard over the years at this point from a client. So we decided to just put those in a very organized format. Uh, how do you handle your on site meetings, and how do you handle your in office meetings? So, There should be again, these sound very simple on the surface, but every one of these has multiple, multiple, multiple, multiple levels and steps underneath it that we need to follow every single time.

I think of it like this when I, when I opened my office in LA and I was in Florida, I moved to LA and I had my Florida team. I wanted to set that up sort of like a franchise, even though it wasn't a franchise. I set it up as if it were. So as you're doing this. You want these documents to be so that if someone picked this up, they could, anybody could take that document and then run that part of your company.

That's as simple as it gets. Right? So you want to make sure that these are so clear that someone who has no idea what design is or how to run a project. You want to make sure that this is as clear as possible. Clear as a bell that every step is laid out very well. All right.  Next one is for trade and vendor.

Some of these are an overlap, but you'll see that. Okay. These are also probably things that, um, we've all done and we do them again. We do them unknowingly. We do them as routine. We do them because we're good at it. It's to the point when you take that information and document it, that's when you really realize how much you actually do as a designer.

So your agreement, project onboarding, and, and there is a project onboarding process with tradespeople and with vendors sometimes. So remember that you're not just onboarding clients, you're onboarding your trades as well. You let them know how you want them to behave on the job site. You let them know when they can contact you.

Can they speak to the client, you know, all of these things. should be documented in a process for them to understand. Um, I even have an agreement like I have there with my trades people. So if you're this many days late on a project, this is how much you're going to be paying per day. This is how much insurance you have to have.

So there's so many things involved with not only client parts of things, but also the trades and vendors as well.  Purchasing. So if you're purchasing from a trades person, if it's a artisan, a local artisan, and you want to purchase something that they custom make for you, you want to make sure that you have a system in place for that.

Deliveries and storage. This goes without saying, all of the things that we're ordering has to go somewhere. Hopefully not in anybody's garages, but I bet there are some people here who store them in the garages. I know I did that,  uh, client communication. Do you allow the trades to communicate with the client?

I mean, do you, do you have a strict rule of no client communication with the trades person? Because that can get a little. A little tricky  team communication. How do you, how do you communicate with their team? So I always say you're only as good as the person who's on the project, right? So this GC can sell you the best service ever.

Oh my God, I'm going to be there all the time. And it's so good. And then Joe gets there and he's drunk trying to install tile and,  and you're only as good as that person. Who is there on the job site and you can't always handle that person because you're not, they're not your responsibility. So you need to have a process in place.

If that does happen, which is embarrassing for the client, it's embarrassing for you. It's hopefully embarrassing for the GC, but you want to have a process in place like, okay. This email goes out to the client. This goes out to the tradesperson. This goes out to the GC. This is what we're going to do. And it's about, you know, over communicating.

Which I love, love, love over communicating.  As you can tell.  Uh, work quality requirements for the job. On site procedures. So these are how they operate when they are on the job site. Project revision. So if there is a revision on the project. What do you do? What do you supply to them? What's the process?

How do they get that information to you? Is it emailed? Is it in person? If it is in person, who, who documents that?  Lots of stuff, right? I mean, so much. Nobody tells you this when you're on, watching HGTV and like, looking at all the pretty rooms. No one goes through all of the headache and the, the behind the scenes things.

And, and by the way, I want us all to make a pledge to one another. We need to be more honest and more open and more authentic about what actually happens in our projects with our clients, because our clients love a pretty picture that we paint for them. But what if they knew, what if they knew this was arriving late?

What if they knew that this horrible thing happened and then you handled it? In a perfect way, so you look like the savior of the situation, but it also lets them know that, you know, you're not perfect. Things don't always go as planned. So I, I want us all to just be more communicative with each other with our clients and sort of bridge that gap between our clients and us because it's, it's a, it's a big divide.

Sometimes if we, if we don't, uh, if we let it happen, um, and then in office meetings and meetings. All right. The last one.  If you do have a team, um, you want to have lots of processes for that too. So how do you onboard team members? How do you handle internal communication with your team members? How do you do client communication?

Is there a lead person who talks to the client? If they do, what do they say? How does that process work?  Um, internal office protocols. So what do you have inside of your office that, you know, you have to follow on a daily basis? And this could be everything from how the office opens to when is lunch, when you can close, who answers the phone, all the little things.

Again, think of it like a franchise and that will make you realize how many things you need to relay as far as information. Um, time off requests. internal conflicts.  If someone's fighting, how do you handle it? You know, you are the, you're the leader. You have to know what process you have. If, if, if two of your team members are having issues, how do you, what do you do about it?

And my husband's HR. So he's taught me a lot about what to do about that. So thankfully I've avoided making lots of mistakes in that area. I hope, um, hiring, Firing, um, you need to have a process in place for that. What is your communication with a client? If you're with your employee, if you're letting them go, um, are you following all of the rules for that, uh, legally and just, you know, especially if it's an employee that you enjoy working with, but you have to let them go.

You want to make sure you do that in a very delicate way. Of course, uh, pay pay increases. And then this one is, um, interesting because it's in the internal department because I actually like to have my team members create my systems and processes for me sometimes. And it's not because I'm lazy, it's because they're in the field and they're seeing everything that's happening.

And so they may see something that I didn't even know. So a lot of times, um, I will start the process, or the system, and overall, and then they will add in the specifics to that, and, um, I also let them edit it as well, so we'll talk about that in a second.  Okay, you guys good? We good? Okay, good. Alright. I know.

It's not them. It's not pretty things, but it's good stuff.  Here is my little three step process for figuring out your processes.  You need to evaluate, implement, and then adjust. I think those are the three steps for anything that you do within your company a lot of times, but especially for processes.  So first I want you to create a main list  of all the business activities that you do in one day.

Are you tired already just thinking about it? Right? I mean, I mean, everything. Everything. So for up for 30 to 60 days, whatever you do, whatever type of project you're working on, I want you to write down every single thing you do. Called a client, canceled the tradesperson, uh, rescheduled the meeting, all the things, right?

First of all, you're going to be very impressed with all that you do. You can pat yourself on the back for it, but this is going to be the basis for creating a good system for your company. And we all do things differently. Um, some of us probably do things similarly in some ways, but this is your, your little list.

It doesn't have to be pretty. I give you permission to write it on a napkin. I gave you permission to write it with a crayon. I don't care. Just write it all down because this literally will show you all the things that you need to get an order with your company. Then remember those little trio I showed you earlier, my, my systems trio.

You want to take all those tasks after that 30, 60 day period. And if, by the way, if you're having a project that is more construction or renovation or purely decorating or. If you're doing that and it overlaps, keep, keep taking those notes and keep writing those things down because those are all different systems and processes that you'll need for that specific type of work. 

But you divide those into your categories. Little list, super simple, just a piece of notebook paper. And then, this is the part where you're gonna hate me. I want you to List the process underneath every single one of those tasks that you laid out there. Right? So if it was onboarding your client, I want to know,  hello client.

Yes, you've reached my firm to the last vase is put on the shelf. Like I want everything listed in there because this is where it's, this is where the rubber hits the road. This is where you really realize what is involved in all of that. And you can take that and tweak it and maybe you're doing something right.

Maybe you're doing something wrong. I did a lot of things wrong. That's why mine got to where it is now. And I really made sure that I honed it, but you will get there, but just make sure that you do write all of those down. Now I'll give you more than two months to do this though. So take your time on this one, probably more like six months to a year.

I give you to do this because this is very, very, very involved. This one you could write down. I suggest actually putting it into a Word document or a Google Doc just so you don't lose it. Next,  you are going to implement, so all of these things that you wrote down, all of your systems, we're going to put them into action.

We're going to get them out there. We're going to start using them. You're going to document all of these processes in a central location. I'm going to show you that in a minute, um, in a very similar way. So you want to make sure that everything looks, um, The same. So you have the same template for everything.

The same heading is your logo in the same spot. Where is the title of the SOP? Where is the, how are the steps laid out? Everything should be very, very, very similar in how they look so that when anyone pulls up that document, it feels very much the same as the one before. It just has different information on it. 

Um, then you start using them, right? So you're going to start using all of these processes that you put into place. Everything that you've worked so hard on all of the steps. I want you to start using them. So step one, all the way down to step 455, you need to start using them and make sure that as you do those.

You were crossing those off. And again, we use Asana. So Asana is great because you can actually put in the task and then you can put in the person that you're assigning the task to. And if you're a solopreneur, it's probably going to be you a lot of times, but that's okay. Um, but, but it could also be some sort of, um, contractor that you work with, or it could be your bookkeeper.

And the beautiful thing with Asana is that you can actually share that file with them and include them in on it. And there's a free version of it that you can use. We use the paid version only because. You just set dependencies to kind of roll over if this happens and that will happen. But, um, I encourage you to at least look at that.

Um, there's a few other options out there, which we'll talk about,  but start using them and then you adjust.  So this is the part where you want to find out if what you did was correct. So I want you to.  Put your ego to the side, which as designers, do we really have much ego anymore after our clients are done with us?

I mean, come on. Uh, but ask your clients and your trades and your team for feedback. These are the people who are using all these processes that you put into place.  You want to know if it's working. You want to know if they need to tweak something, or if something was erroneous, or if this step should be moved before that step.

That's, your job is to follow through with that, to make sure that they're happy with it, because they're the ones using it. When I said that I asked my team members, if everything's working okay. It's probably on at least a weekly basis. Uh, is this good? Are you guys happy with this? Should we change that?

Are you good with this situation? Because they're the ones on the front line. And don't be afraid to ask your trades people either. They'll tell you. God knows they'll tell you if they're happy or not. So ask them if they're happy with the process too, because they are critical to the success of the product. 

Um, then you adjust, right? So you're going to adjust your processes based on that experience. So if they said something that Should be changed and you analyze it and you figure out. Yeah, it should adjust it. Make that change in there. Don't be afraid to do that. You can always go back and tweak these. Um, they're not written in stone, but you need to at least get them down so that you can adjust them after the fact.

What I do is when we have an a change on a on a document or a process, I have the team member go in who changes it. They put their name in there. They put their date when they changed it. And so I know who to go back to if there was something that they found out that I didn't know, or if there was something that another team member found out about a process.

I know exactly who did it. And then they can talk about why they did it. And they're the ones to go back to. So it should always be kept up to date. And I suggest probably evaluating these.  I mean, not weekly like I do, but maybe like every six months or so, take a peek at them just to make sure that, you know, you, what you have put into place is working. 

Okay, document these. Here's what we do. That's me after, over my computer for about eight hours. I wish my hair looked that good, actually. Um, so create a main online folder to store all of your systems and processes. This is something where everybody should be able to access. You can even share that information with your trades people, with your vendors, but have one area where everybody can, sorry, I'm in your way, have an area where every single person can go to, to find that information.

There's lots of innovative ways to do that, but the simplest way is just to use a Google drive or a Dropbox or something like that. We like Google drive personally.  After you do that, I want you to create the folders for the sub folders for your client, your trade and vendor and your team and your internal.

So you have the main folder.  And then that folder are the three sub folders that will house all of the other things. And, and this is a living, breathing, uh, folder system. So you can add to it, delete all those things. It's going to be there. So just remember, as you create more systems and processes for your company, you can just keep adding them to it.

And it just becomes, before you know it, you have this big, beautiful Bible of processes that you can implement on every project.  Um, and then you want to create sub folders within each system folder. So you have your  System folders with your client, you're trading your vendor and your internal systems.

And then inside of that is all of the little things. So here's what that looks like. And I mentioned earlier, create a system, a process template that you can use for consistency. Okay. So  don't doze off on me. I know it's like not pretty stuff again, but I did make them bounce. I made the little folders bounce.

So  I would keep you guys awake. So this is the main folder that I talked about. And then you want to move that down into these are the three little  folders. Aren't they cute? They're jumping up and down really good. You're still with me. I even changed the color on it. So good. And then here are the phases.

So we break it down. We have three main phases for our, our client journey for our project journey. And I take all of those phases and those become the folders underneath that, which has all of the processes underneath there. So you can easily. Divide your projects up into phases ever how you would prefer to do that.

We just prefer three big phases that house every single thing inside of it. It makes it good for compartmentalizing it. So hi client we're done with. Phase one. We're moving to phase two. Here's where we are. I always say a client should never call and wonder what step we're on in the process. And by having this, this allows my team and myself to be able to answer the question for every single client. 

And then it goes down to the little baby folders and these little baby folders are the ones that have everything inside of it. So each one of those folders is a separate system. Okay. And a separate, or a separate process, I should say, underneath that system.  See, that wasn't so bad.  Okay, if you're not, if you're not someone who writes things down, you can actually record yourself with showing the system, or showing the process to whomever you need to show it to.

It's not my favorite way because I feel like the editing of this, if something changes, it has to be updated. But if, if you do want to do that, there is an option. I'm going to show you how, uh, some platforms that will do that for you. All the other stuff stays the same by the way. So you still make the same layout of folders underneath there, but it's just videos.

So it's yourself. Hi, you know, hi, here we are. We're going to onboard this client. Here's step one, step two, and you actually physically. Uh, on the video, lead them through that. Um, I've done them  for my team. God bless them. I forgot to turn the camera off and I've looked horrible at like 11 o'clock at night, you know, hair everywhere.

But, uh, I've done them before. If you don't have a way in these, um, video systems to do a folder, you can actually just create a link to that and then create one main Google doc. So your main Google doc will have. Just the title of that, um, process and that system in there, and then they click it and that will link over to that video for you to share with them. 

Here are some that you can use. Have you guys heard of any of these at all?  Loom is pretty popular. It is kind of the main one that's out there. You can also record with Zoom, of course, whereby is one that we use internally for our own self sometimes to do meetings on. Uh, Trainual is one that I just found.

It's really cool. It actually does it. Kind of does it for you.  Uh, Vimeo is another one. And then did you guys know you could record in Canva? Like I did this presentation on Canva, but you can actually record yourself inside of Canva on, on screen if you want and kind of lead people through. This last one scribe is super cool.

I just found it a few weeks ago. It's free and it's an extension on the Google, on Google Chrome. And as you're going in and you're on the website, so let's say I'm documenting how to pay my California sales tax. So I go on and I go to the website and everywhere I click, there's a little circle that highlights where I clicked.

And then I At the end of that, it says, are you complete with your process? Yes. It documents it for you. It actually put step one, you went here, step two, click this. So it's very, very, very simple. So if you really want to get these processes out quickly, this is a really good way to do that. And again, for some reason it's free.

I don't know if they've just forgotten about it or what, but it's,  it's free and it's good. Um, okay. Now I'm going to get very specific with you.  Okay. This is. A lot, but this is going to demonstrate I'm very dramatic. I love to, I love to show you how many things are involved in just the client onboarding process, right? 

Um, this is every step that we take from the minute We speak to a client until the minute we move them into the, to the next phase. So this is phase one for us. I didn't bring you phase two because that we would have been here all night, but this is phase one of what we do with our client. And by the way, I'm going to share with you at the end, not only this presentation, but you can actually, I'm going to give you my Asana, a link to download this process and you can actually import that into your own Asana if you want.

And then also for those of you who don't want to do a sauna, I did a little Google doc where it's actually just written out step by step. So you don't have to open up any technology. I know. Yes. Thank you.  I know, I know my people. Uh, so it's either way you want to go with it, but the Asana one is very cool.

It's just a little folder, a file that you download and then you import it in. But the Google drive is really cool too. So, you know, why not use that? So here we go. So this first, this first part is just things that we keep on file. For every client. And then I will say this first part about personal info and links.

This is something we keep on the top of every project. So this technically isn't client onboarding. We already have this information, but I wanted to put it here. Just to show you guys what we keep for, for that part of it.  Um, scope of work. Do you all include a scope of work in your agreement? And is it, if you don't please do, and please make it very detailed.

And I mean, details like details, like two nightstands, two pendant lights, you know, that is your Bible to go back to. If the client ever says, Oh, I want to add this on. I want to add that on. You need that scope of work to, to fall back on.  I'm not gonna read all of this to you. Don't worry. Um, but scope of work is one.

And then we do a welcome the client in so you can do a welcome video. You can do a welcome PDF. There should be some sort of formal process to bring the client and get them excited. Hi, here we are. Here's how you access your client portal. If you have 1, here's how we work. We have a great little how we work document that we send out that talks about.

Everything from, you know, don't text us, ever, um, to,  to, um, when we are in the office, to how, how they can communicate with us, all the things are in there for the client on the how we work document, and I love it, personally, because, It avoids a lot of uncomfortable conversations that we don't like to have as people pleasers, and we can just send that document over to them and they're just, they have it in their disposal.

We actually upload it to their client portal so that they can access it at any time, or I can copy and paste and send over and say, no Sally, this is not what you're going to do because it says right here that we don't do that.  Um, and then we move into a set up system. So. All of our systems, there's a, there's a system for our systems, so you have to set up all the systems inside of your client project.

Um, and then these are some of the steps there. Then we invoice a creative fee. I've divided my fees up in a kind of a different way. I do creative fee. I do project fulfillment fee. So project fulfillment, I never, ever call it project management because I'm not managing projects. I don't do that. That's not what I signed up for, but project fulfillment makes more sense to me so that I can fulfill the design plan for the project with everybody else that's involved in it.

And it just, I know litigation can happen and I know finger pointing can happen at any time, but it takes a load off of my shoulders to know that I'm calling it project fulfillment. And I'm very, very clear. With a client, they get a two page document that shows what project fulfillment is, and it shows them how many times we're coming to their house.

When are we coming to their house? Is it for tile layout? Is it for lighting layout? What, what are we going to be doing there? They're never going to be like, Hey, come on over randomly because we have it laid out for them for every project. 

22 pages, of course it's detailed. If  it's not, it's going to be 26. No, it is. It's in there. Um, I actually have all, I have 18 steps that we go through for every project. 

Um, this is internal. So, this is, clients do not see this. This is, this is what keeps you in line. So, a client might see some of this. So, if it says email a client, these are action statements that you will take to implement them. 

But, but these are, these are steps that you physically take, and some of them, some of them are implemented for the client. Some of them you'll see are implemented for us internally, right? Like, clients are not going to set up systems. We're going to do that. Yeah. Yeah.  Um, so the creative fee is what we call, what you might think of design fee.

That's what we call creative. So the creative fee is invoice. Here's what that looks like. Um, we invoice a retainer. We hold a retainer until the end of the project. This is what that step looks like. Then we send out a questionnaire. They've already answered a general questionnaire, but this is very specific.

Are they doing a kitchen remodel, a bathroom remodel? Is it purely decorating? This goes a little more nitty gritty into their specific project.  And then we go into the um, project inspiration images. We use HAL, so you can use whatever you want. But Pinterest, anything, but we use house and we create idea books for every space that they are going to be, um, addressing in their project.

And then every one of those folders has items that they upload and then items that we upload as well.  Then we go into the project investment, lots of steps, right? See, this is literally just getting the client like onboarded into your, into your company. So project investment, this is where we figure out what the client's going to spend on that project.

We've already talked about it in general. During our consultation now, it goes into the very specific part of how much literally do you want to put in every allowance for every category for your projects? This goes very, very specific. Then you want to set your milestone dates and these are just big, big dates that you really want to have set in place.

So you can see there. It's everything from presentations to. When you're going to do a tentative installation, all the things that's going to happen that you need to set as milestones, you need to try to put a tentative date in place for those so that it holds you accountable that this project's not going to go on and on and on and on and on.

You can actually end it on a specific timeframe because it says it right there. Of course, we know there's adjustments to be made with everything these days, but for the most part, I do find that if you put the date in there, it will hold you accountable to it. And it will hold all of your team members and anyone else involved accountable as well. 

Um, and then you want to assign all the asana tasks that I mentioned earlier. So these are assigned to specific team members. With a due date inside of your Asana. So every single thing that's done for the project will have a due date and a person who's going to do that. I like it because it lets me go in at any point and see where we are in the project.

Oh yes, that wasn't done. Oh yes, that was completed. But for a solopreneur, it really does, there's nothing more fulfilling than checking that done box and letting, seeing that confetti fly and knowing that you marked one thing off your fricking list for the day, right?  And then we do a site survey where we go out and all the measuring and documentation.

But if you look at this, like, take a little peek at this. So we do everything from not just scheduling the site survey. We email the client to let them know about expectations. This many people are coming. Here's what's going to happen. You pack your little bag to go with you for your survey. You send them a reminder one day before because God knows they don't remember a lot.

So you send them a reminder, anyone else that's coming out, you organize everything, you upload that. So this is just the site survey and there's 11 steps under the site survey. Just that one little task on the project. So I hope you're seeing how much detail we actually do and how much we actually bring to a project and I hope it's opening your eyes.

To how important every single step is, and by writing it down and document it, you're not going to forget it because it's going to stare at you in the face. And Asana is good because it will, when you log in, you have this many things to do today. This is your, this is your due dates for the date. And you can even set reminders to remind yourself to do something a week before.

So if something's due in a week, you can put a reminder into. Ask yourself to complete that. We, we do a project direction board, and it's sort of like a mood board, but we call it a project direction board because  I feel like this is where the direction of the project is going. So all of the images that the client has saved, all of the images that we have added to their folder, we put that into this project direction board in a kind of a nice format.

We have a template that we use. And that is what the client reviews with us. Then we require that they sign off on the project direction board. That's the very final step in this process. Then we move to trade day, which I know you guys are familiar with trade day. Trade day. But trade day itself can be a nightmare if you don't have processes in place  for that.

So that's what we have involved in our trade day. And then the last little line there is you complete phase one, you prepare to move to phase two, you notify the client that the phase one is complete, we're going to move to phase two. So does this make sense? Like you're seeing how every single thing has.

So many steps to the process, but it does keep you in line and it does keep your team in line and it lets your clients know here is a few software apps that I used to help me with systems and processes. 

Just a few. 

So here, well, I've used them all in one form or another. I've literally, I told you, I'm a technology nerd. I love these things. They act like a separate team member, you guys. They literally will remind you. Or, for instance, we use Acuity for our, um, scheduling of our consultations. And for our, uh, uh, discovery calls, right?

So when we, when a client schedules a consultation with us on Acuity on our website. They get an automatic email that has a reply that we've already put into that. Not only that, but any uploads that we have, any documents, any PDFs that we want them to see at that point are automatically sent to them.

Think about it, that's a manual transaction that you would have had to do on your own that this software is now doing. It's, it's really good. Some of them are dumb, but some of them are good. You know, so  we use Slack. I'll tell you guys, which one we use. We use Slack all the time. It's a savior for us all the time.

Um, Acuity we use have some sort of client management. Software that you use have some sort of whether it's any of these. I don't care. Just something that you use that will keep your client informed of what's happening on their project, and they can approve products in their everything stored in one place.

Please move away from the Excel spreadsheets and from their Google sheets. That is not the way to. Organize a project. I know a lot of you are doing that, and I'm not putting you down because I've been here too. I just I'm telling you there's better ways. There's a light at the end of that Excel spreadsheet, and it's called client software. 

Uh, Zapier is really good. So if you wanted to connect a lot of these softwares together, you can zap something over. So, for instance, if someone schedules a discovery call with us, It automatically adds them to our email list. So they get an email every month about what we're doing. So it's something that we don't have to do manually.

Um, monday. com is an alternative to Asana. So it's, it's like an Asana, but for us, we found it to be a little too techie feeling. Like the, the, the software just wasn't like flowing as well. So we went back to Asana. And are very happy with that. The Posado is good. I don't know if you guys, anyone heard of the Posado?

By any chance? Yeah. It's good because you can actually, it will do a lot of the automation for you. So if you want to move things along in a process. We use it to, um, send out proposals. So we'll create the proposal in a, in Dubsado, and then send it out to the client, and then they approve it, and then the contract is automatically generated.

So they get to read 22 pages after they get that little pretty pro The proposal's really pretty, though. Like, the proposal has, like, the nice pictures in it, and, you know, there's us smiling, and then they get the 22 page contract right after that. Uh, Flodest is good. We, we like Flodest. HoneyBook, by the way, is another Dubsado, um, companion.

They can, one or the other. Flodest is good. If you, if you don't have an email list, I do suggest that you start an email list, because,  God forbid, social media went away, and what would we all do? The Kardashians would be literally without anything. But, um, Flodest is good, because if you want to put something free on your website to sort of, you know, Capture client's attention, and even if they don't buy from you, you can add them to your email list for when they want to, uh, purchase from you, even if it's just a consultation.

But Flodesk is good. It's a software that will send that document over. So like, five ways to choose the best paint color, you know, five ways to create a professional looking, um, bedroom, things like that. They get it automatically, and then they download, um, that, and then they're in your email list.  Dropbox, you guys know that.

And then Canva and PowerPoint. We used those both. This, this little thing was done on Canva, actually.  All right, we did it, you guys. So, this is mission accomplished. Wake up. Uh, no, I, I know this is very laborious and there's so many things in here that we don't like as designers to think about, but I want you to really see how important it is to, Think about your systems and processes, get those in line, write them down, give yourself grace to do it over a certain time frame.

Don't beat yourself up if you don't get it done quickly, because it took me 13 years total. And then just to assemble everything in a readable format was about 24 months. And I'm not even joking. So it is a long process, but you will be so happy when you're done. And if you're on vacation or if you're out of town or any, not even in the office, for whatever reason, you can know that your team or anyone else involved on that project has everything written out for them to understand how to do it.

Um, and then lastly, I wanted to tell you, if you wanted to download. Any of this, you can just scan this little thingy here, uh, QR code is what it's called, and it will, uh, send you to a page, and you can download the presentation, you get the Asana template, and then as well as the, uh, Google Docs template 

 Alrighty there you have it. Everybody has sort of cuts off quickly at the end, but I hope that you did enjoy this presentation. This repeat presentation of my seminar at universal learning center. As I said, this was presented live almost two years ago, and I just wanted to show you how these presentations go when they are presented, live, how fabulous they are. 

I love the interaction. I love speaking with the audience. I love as you see having fun with everybody. And if you. You are once again, coming to high point market and sprain or the fall, or anytime you can always catch me at high point market. I'm always there always trying to teach you guys something, always trying to share information. And I hope that you found this useful once again, if you want to grab the download, head to the notes section of this podcast, and you can download that, or if you always want to find any of the downloads that I give on this podcast, you can go to the links and my Instagram and find those there. 

Just go to the link in my bio. you can see where it says all the links and it will have that there for you. Or on my website, John mcclain.co, there was a link that says freebies and all of the freebies will be there for you to download anything that I ever mentioned on this podcast. For you to download will be there. Thank you for listening. 

Thanks for being there. I hope to see you soon again. If you are listening and in real time, please come out on Sunday, April 14th at 2:00 PM. For that meet and greet for everyone who listens to the podcast would love to give you a hug. 





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 📍 And remember to make those big changes on the outside. Sometimes we have to start within, I'll see you next time. My friend.  Thanks for sticking with me to the end of the designer within podcast. It means the world to me. If you're ready to dive deeper into the topics that we've discussed here, be sure to check out my online coaching and courses program, design success academy. com here. I will teach you everything you need to know to run your interior design business.

From starting the project all the way to the end, including marketing and pricing your services for profit. And for more information on this podcast, including how to be a guest or my design services in general, go to johnmcclain.  co. That's johnmcclain. co. See you soon, friend