Downside was that I had to reinstall all my editing software, but that trouble was a small price to pay for getting rid of that inconsistent internet connection.
Work has been the same, I have been receiving a steady stream of customer leads from my company and a lot of them are only in for the free quotes, so nowadays, instead of doing up a proper quotation for them, I will just drop them a text with the renovation package attached and hope they just fuck off and stop wasting my time.
About 2 months ago, one of my friend contacted me asking about renovation services my company was offering, he just got a new flat and was looking to have some renovation works done, unfortunately, he was a little tight on budget so I knew he was not going to be able to afford my services, but I decided to just prepare a quotation for him to take a look at first and give him a rough estimate of how much his renovation will actually cost. Naturally, he got a bit surprised at how much higher my final figure was compared to his budget as well as the quote given to him by the other Interior Design firms he had sought out, so after a little back and forth, we both came to the conclusion that I was not the right person for his project.
I didn't really get back to him after our last exchange and assumed he had already picked an Interior Designer to work with, I thought that will be the last time he will be asking me about his home renovation project, until this morning when he got back to me to ask about some costing related questions, asking me if his Interior Designer was offering him a good price on some carpentry works and if he was being cheated etc.
He wasn't, in fact, when I saw the price I felt like the one who was being cheated was the Interior Designer, for taking up the project because there is almost no profit margin.
I gave my friend a rough estimate of how much I would charge him for certain carpentry items to give him a price comparison, as well as to assure him that he was really getting a very good deal from his Interior Designer, but instead of going...
"Wow, my Interior Designer is really doing me a huge favor by charging me so little!"
... he goes...
"Wah, why your one so expensive? It's just a piece of wood."
... because Interior Designers all just travel to the nearest Art Friend, get a few plywood from there, throw it into a new home with some hammers and nails, recite an incantation, wait for a few weeks and BAM, your home is done.
Sigh.... such ignorance.
It really is quite worrying for me though, to realize that out there, there are actually Interior Designers who would earn close to nothing, just to get a project to run, although to be fair, his Interior Designer he found is actually someone he knows personally, so there is that reason, I'm not super close to him, that's why I'm not willing to run his project for him for "free".
I was recently on an Interior Design forum and one user was asking the community for some feedback about the quote his Interior Designer had given to him. As someone who has been doing renovation quotes regularly for the past 3 months, I am pretty familiar with how much certain items will have to be sold at, and when I took a look at the quotation the user shared, I realize that it was actually quite low, or lower than my price, there will still be some profit made from the project, but not much, and really, the user really has nothing to worry about, but then the first response to that thread was...
"Hmmm, price a bit steep, can go lower."
....Go lower? The Interior Designer is already barely making any profit from the project and you say can go lower. Hello? You think the Interior Designer can survive off a generous heart?
Every time I go to that forum, I just get really riled up by the level of ignorance a handful of the forum users there exhibit. You don't look at an Interior Designer's quote and compare it to a Contractor's quote, that's not how it works, so no, the quote shouldn't go any lower.
That's like me walking up to a random office worker who is barely making ends meet and telling the people around him...
That's like me walking up to a random office worker who is barely making ends meet and telling the people around him...
"I think his salary is too high, can go lower."
... I get that customers will want to get the best price possible, but please, at least spare a thought for the poor Interior Designers who are barely making any money.
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