So one of my customer leads from a month back suddenly dropped me an email today and in it, she dropped me a copy of her floorplan and shared with me that she would like to work with me and then gave me the colour scheme she was interested in.
My company has been giving me a relatively steady steam of customer leads, but I will say 90% of them are pretty much a waste of time, they are either unresponsive when reached out or they have a budget that is comically low, this particular client who reached out to me today belongs to the latter.
Back when the office gave me her enquiry, the renovation requirements didn't really state much, it had the basic information attached to the email, which is the type of apartment the client had and the budget, when I saw those 2 information and how much they did not tally together, I just immediately labelled it as a waste of time and didn't bother reaching out.
Normally our leads are distributed to us by renovation portals. When a customer reaches out to a renovation portal, their enquiry will get disseminated to an average of about 5 to 6 random interior design firms that matches their requirements, which is basically "budget conscious" or "willing to pay for design", no prize for guessing which category my company falls under. Anyways, I figured if 1 out of the 5 to 6 interior design firms didn't reach out to her, she probably wouldn't even notice, so I dropped her as a potential customer lead the moment I got my hands on her requirements.
Well, she reached out today and I was honestly surprised because it has already been a month since I got her information and there was no prior contact from my end to her, so the only possibility could be that she either really wants to engage my company for her renovation services or she has spoken to all the other interior design firms and they have turned her down because of her unrealistic budget.
I think it is probably the latter, I think she had a whole month to talk to a few of them who even bothered reaching out to her and all of them came to the same conclusion, to drop her.
The budget she has set aside to renovate her apartment is just not realistic, it would be the same as me walking into an LV Store with $500 to purchase a limited edition $8000 bag. The amount I brought with me isn't low and I can probably get something from the store, but it is not the limited edition bag and it is the same with this particular customer, she has enough budget to do a small renovation, but not enough to do the renovation she wants to do.
I do not like reaching out to customers like her who have such unrealistic budgets because I feel that to them, the amount that they have decided to set aside is already considered, to themselves, "realistic", and asking them to increase their budget any higher than what they have decided to spend would be ridiculous, if they added more to their budget, they would expect better materials, higher level of service and higher level of just everything because to them, they are "paying more", so they "expect more", I can offer them a very competitive price for the works they have requested at the expense of my commission, but in their head, my reduced commission means nothing to them, they will still expect more even if I do them the favor of earning less on my end and I am simply not that generous of an individual to want to work with potential ingrates.
I really do not get clients like this. We are not going to take projects that will cause us to make a loss! Simple as that, it is not about our willingness to earn less, it is about the fact that we won't NOT ONLY be earning nothing, we will literally be losing money if we take on projects like theirs.
Anyways, since the client emailed me, I decided to email back and asked her to tell me exactly what she wanted to renovate, I also of course told her that her budget was not viable at all, that if she wanted to proceed, she should reconsider her budget and then also just slap my company's renovation package in the email so she can actually see how much a renovation of her magnitude would cost. The company's renovation package barely covers the basic stuff and it has already overshot her budget by 50%, and I think it is very safe to assume her requirements will be more than what the package covers.
Well, I hope she gets me message and don't message me back.
This is the kind of leads the company has been providing me, quantity over quality.
Monday 27 April 2020
Saturday 11 April 2020
The Chair, the Desktop and the Dog
A few months ago, I got myself a Secret Lab Chair, I had been planning to get one for a while because I needed to get a new chair and figured since I am on my computer almost all the time when I am home, I should invest in a proper computer chair.
It took me a few months before I decided to make the purchase because it was expensive and I had to really mull it over, but I did eventually confirm the order and the chair arrives a like a few days later in this relatively huge and heavy box, it was a real bitch to set up but reading all the positive reviews online written about it by a bunch of users, I figured it was worth it, I was under the assumption that the moment I sat on it, it would feel like I was sitting on a cloud, that it would just envelope me and I could sit there forever since this chair was being marketed as being extremely ergonomic.
Well, it didn't feel like a cloud, it was firm as fuck and it wasn't as comfortable as I had envisioned it to be, build wise it felt solid, comfort wise it was way too fucking solid.
After a bit of research, I come to find out the reason why there are so many positive reviews about the chair online is because if you write a good review online, the company will extend your warranty, so essentially if you want an extended warranty, you are required to leave a good review online, whether you think the chair is good or not, that means all the reviews I have read online are "fake", which is great marketing but it is also kinda feel like I have been indirectly lied to.
My honest opinion about the chair is that it is pretty shit because for a $500 price tag, I expected a lot more, it is simply not as comfortable as I was lead to believe and turns out, there are actually quite a fair bit of negative Google Reviews about the chair, huge fail on my part for not noticing them until now, those reviews are mainly pointing about the peeling leather after a year of use, and not so much what I am currently complaining about, so fuck my life I guess that is what I am going to have to expect happen next year to my chair.
A few weeks back, I also made another huge purchase, I got myself a new computer to replace my 5 year old Aftershock laptop, which has honestly served me really well. I was planning to get a Microsoft Surface Laptop for a really shallow reason, aesthetics, but realize that I am not earning enough to warrant aesthetics as a valid reason to shell out $2000 for a laptop with mediocre specs worst than my current Aftershock laptop, I needed an upgrade, not a downgrade.
So I decided to take a look at a few Aftershock Products, go back to the brand that had served me so well for the past 5 years, and see what I could get with my budget and all the available options were pretty much upgrade from my current build, but there was one huge issue, they were all too heavy.
The reason why I was considering the Surface Laptop, aside from the aesthetics, was also because of it's lightweight, so if I got a new laptop, I also needed it to be lightweight and anything close to 2kg was going to be blacklisted. Almost all the laptops Aftershock had were bordering on 2kg, the light ones they had were "workstation", which I was not interested in because if I was getting an Aftershock brand, I was going to get one of their gaming laptops.
Getting a "workstation laptop" from a brand that specializes in gaming rigs is like going to a Duck Rice store and ordering a plate of Chicken Rice, I did that once, I was an idiot because I didn't even want Chicken Rice or Duck Rice at that time.
Anyways, since I couldn't get what I wanted, I thought fuck it, go big or go home.
The whole point of me wanting a lighter laptop is so I can lighten my bag load when I go back and forth from home to office, but what if I don't have to bring my laptop back and forth, what if I just left it in the office.
So I got a desktop.
It took me a few months before I decided to make the purchase because it was expensive and I had to really mull it over, but I did eventually confirm the order and the chair arrives a like a few days later in this relatively huge and heavy box, it was a real bitch to set up but reading all the positive reviews online written about it by a bunch of users, I figured it was worth it, I was under the assumption that the moment I sat on it, it would feel like I was sitting on a cloud, that it would just envelope me and I could sit there forever since this chair was being marketed as being extremely ergonomic.
Well, it didn't feel like a cloud, it was firm as fuck and it wasn't as comfortable as I had envisioned it to be, build wise it felt solid, comfort wise it was way too fucking solid.
After a bit of research, I come to find out the reason why there are so many positive reviews about the chair online is because if you write a good review online, the company will extend your warranty, so essentially if you want an extended warranty, you are required to leave a good review online, whether you think the chair is good or not, that means all the reviews I have read online are "fake", which is great marketing but it is also kinda feel like I have been indirectly lied to.
My honest opinion about the chair is that it is pretty shit because for a $500 price tag, I expected a lot more, it is simply not as comfortable as I was lead to believe and turns out, there are actually quite a fair bit of negative Google Reviews about the chair, huge fail on my part for not noticing them until now, those reviews are mainly pointing about the peeling leather after a year of use, and not so much what I am currently complaining about, so fuck my life I guess that is what I am going to have to expect happen next year to my chair.
A few weeks back, I also made another huge purchase, I got myself a new computer to replace my 5 year old Aftershock laptop, which has honestly served me really well. I was planning to get a Microsoft Surface Laptop for a really shallow reason, aesthetics, but realize that I am not earning enough to warrant aesthetics as a valid reason to shell out $2000 for a laptop with mediocre specs worst than my current Aftershock laptop, I needed an upgrade, not a downgrade.
So I decided to take a look at a few Aftershock Products, go back to the brand that had served me so well for the past 5 years, and see what I could get with my budget and all the available options were pretty much upgrade from my current build, but there was one huge issue, they were all too heavy.
The reason why I was considering the Surface Laptop, aside from the aesthetics, was also because of it's lightweight, so if I got a new laptop, I also needed it to be lightweight and anything close to 2kg was going to be blacklisted. Almost all the laptops Aftershock had were bordering on 2kg, the light ones they had were "workstation", which I was not interested in because if I was getting an Aftershock brand, I was going to get one of their gaming laptops.
Getting a "workstation laptop" from a brand that specializes in gaming rigs is like going to a Duck Rice store and ordering a plate of Chicken Rice, I did that once, I was an idiot because I didn't even want Chicken Rice or Duck Rice at that time.
Anyways, since I couldn't get what I wanted, I thought fuck it, go big or go home.
The whole point of me wanting a lighter laptop is so I can lighten my bag load when I go back and forth from home to office, but what if I don't have to bring my laptop back and forth, what if I just left it in the office.
So I got a desktop.
But I didn't get from Aftershock because unfortunately, they were not responsive and their delivery date was a little bit iffy. On the website, it states they could deliver within 5 to 6 days, but when I read other customer's experience, there are some who stated that they were told they needed 2 weeks, others said they needed a month and I really didn't want to wait that long.
I reached out to Aftershock on their chat system, hoping to get some clarification because they had a few pre-built models that could be delivered on the same day, no response, was literally waiting for them to reply, only to get a bot message telling me it will take a while, that I should email them if it was urgent.
While I was waiting for them to get back to me, after the bot message, because they literally had a counter of how many people were before me and I was suppose to be next in queue to chat with their guys, I started googling alternative companies and found a newer company called Dreamcore.
They pretty much had the same business model as Aftershock and also a ton of positive reviews, but they were newer so they had a faster delivery date, and like Aftershock, they also had some models that they could deliver on the same day when you order, the best part about it is I can customize the specs and also add in additional items, with Aftershock, I couldn't do that.
I have been using a Laptop since 2007, so the main item I needed when I got a new desktop was a monitor and I wanted to purchase that together with the desktop otherwise it is a bit pointless for me to have the same day delivery option, Aftershock's same day delivery model didn't provide any option for add-on, Dreamcore does and Dreamcore is also cheaper, so I mean at this point, it was a no brainer which one I should choose.
This was $2000 with a 27" Monitor, cheaper and more powerful than the laptops I was looking at, of course zero portability but the fact that I don't have to lug my 2.5kg laptop to and fro the office anymore really sparks joy.
Speaking of things that spark joy, here is a picture of my sister's puppy.
He is no longer my room-mate and has moved to my sister's room.
A more recent pic now that is has grown bigger. He needed to be kept in his pen for potty training because little doggo would shit and pee anywhere he pleased, but he has improved over the past few weeks so now he has more freedom and isn't placed in his playpen very long anymore, little bugger still bites and chew everything he sees though and is hyperactive, so I am wondering if he is doggy special needs or something.
Thursday 9 April 2020
No New Projects in Sight.
Even with the recent "Covid 19 Circuit Breaker" in place, my company is still issuing customer leads to us designers and boy have I been getting a handful of really useless ones, the clients are either unresponsive when reached out to or have unrealistic budget, but most of the time, it's a mixture of both.
My job hunt was a huge bust, that's why I am now back to taking leads from my company, that being said, I am still actively seeking and applying, and the timing now is actually perfect for me because of how many projects I have on hand right now, which is close to zero.
For the first time in 3 years since I joined the company, I can actually see myself run out of projects to do, in the past, I would always have a few on the back burner, waiting to start months later, but this time, I literally have none, after I am done with my friend's project, I will no longer have any new ones that will be tying me down to this company.
A few days ago, a client I had met in the beginning of the year suddenly reached out to me and requested to meet again, I was a little surprise because the last time I met up with her and her husband, it was 3 months back, I had prepared a quote for them and ran through everything in person that time, and for me, the way I work is simple, I will give you all that you need for you to make a decision as a homeowner, you have my quotation and you have my proposal, I have done my part, if you are interested, then you will reach out to me, if not, then it was just not meant to be. I am not the type who will give the customer a call every few days to ask if they have made their decision yet because that is generally how a lot of Interior Designers in my line of work do things, just keeping in constant contact with the customer until the project is clinched or they get rejected. I try not to do that because I just find it very irritating, if I was the customer and the 5 interior designers that I have visited kept messaging me on a daily basis asking me to keep them updated on my decision, I will probably block their number, so I didn't do that to most of my customers unless I really really want to take their project, which honestly speaking only happened once and that particular customer ended up becoming a great source for new referrals, but anyways, because I wasn't reached out by them after the last meet up for 3 months, I pretty much dropped them as potential customers and deleted their number from my phone. I even vividly remember the last time we met, they were really interested but said among themselves...
... so I also kinda knew that if I wanted to get their project, I would have to lower my price, which I wasn't willing to at that point because my price is the market average, I am not charging them higher than usual, the problem isn't with my quotation, the problem is with their budget.
Anyways, when the wife messaged me again recently, I had already deleted her contact so I had no idea who it was, luckily, the wife had a picture of her face as her display picture of her Whatsapp, so I instantly remembered who she was and she requested to meet on site with her husband. Their apartment is in the East, I live in the West, so location wise, this project was already sounding like a huge hassle to me.
My personal rule when it comes to doing projects that are located at an inconvenient location is simple, I don't take them.
I am a worry wort, I get stressed out very easily, when a client messages me about areas in the renovation they are unsatisfied with, my first instinct is to drop everything if I can and head to the site to assess the situation myself, if a sub-con tells me they have an issue that requires my clarification, even if it can be discussed over the phone, I would rather go to site and talk in person, happens all the time. They would call me and ask about something, I will tell them what they need to know, sit around at home or in the office for 15 minutes, mulling about whether I should head down to site to make sure everything is okay, and then pack up and head to site to make sure everything is okay in person, even though the sub-cons already have the answers they need to proceed with their work.
Anyways, because I really like these two clients as individuals, I agreed to the site meeting, we are able to click really well and they share the same sentiment, that is why despite the fact that they were able to find other Interior Design companies who were able to quote them at a lower rate than me, they still came back to me and requested a meet up.
So I don't take project that are located at an inconvenient location, but if I were to do it, there were certain conditions that are needed to be met.
1. I need to click really well with the customer, I need to like them enough to make me even want to consider taking on the hassle.
2. I needed to earn a generous amount of commission from it to make it worth the hassle.
... over the course of the last 5 months, I have met 2 clients who have projects that are located way too far for me to even consider, and those 2 were both equally unpleasant, one was the brick walls I met back in December and the other is actually Mr Antoinette's friend who was just demanding and very unpleasant to talk to via Whatsapp. If you are getting a free quotation, you don't get to have the privilege of giving me a deadline, it just reeks of entitlement, and I fucking hate that smell on clients who haven't sign a contract with me yet.
The brick walls actually reached out and wanted to meet, but I had to find an excuse to turn them down because I would just be looking for trouble if I actually took on their project.
Mr Antoinette's Friend went so far as to create a Whatsapp group, the only people who do that are the ones who are sure they want to engage me, I honestly am not sure where they were with their decision when they created the group chat, but that group chat has been silent since I updated the quote back in January, once I have gotten the Antoinette to pay up the final payment and officially complete that project, I am going to remove myself from his friends' Whatsapp group to let him know indirectly that I am not interested to take his project, because if I were to actually take on the project, I don't need to have good foresight to know that the Mr Antoinette's friend is going to be a complete and fucking utter nightmare to work with.
Anyways, I digress.
So the two clients showed me the quotations they had gotten from other Interior Design firms and they were all cheaper than mine, all the firms they had visited and receive quotes from are firms with huge reputations, my interior design firm is also pretty big as well, so this was not about which company is the best, but purely on who they liked more and they obviously liked me a lot more than the other Interior Designers they met from the other firms because otherwise, they wouldn't have bothered reaching out, they could have just signed a contract with one of the other design firms.
I took a copy of one the quotation from the other design firm to bring back to study, I could tell that the clients really wanted to engage me but my price was "too steep" for them, so I told them I will do my best to match the price and hopefully within a few days, can present them with some good news.
Well, attempting to match the price proved to be impossible.
The price was way too low and I was not comfortable going that low, especially because the location of the apartment was not exactly ideal for me. I tried to go as low as I could but my figures were still a few thousand dollars short, if I actually matched it figure for figure, my personal commission will be taking at least a $1000 cut, which I am simply not willing to sacrifice.
I also believe that the other design firm will have some sort of trick up their sleeves to earn that money back after the client signs up with them because once the homeowners are locked into the contract, the designers can and will very likely start adding in additional items, also known as "hidden cost', looking at the quote they shared with me, I already noticed a few key items were excluded from the quote and labelled as "optional", all in an attempt to lower the final figures.
I actually prepared my quote based on what the other design firm quoted them, and also did what they did by taking out key items and listing them as optional, I then send the quote to the client and wrote that I had already done my best but simply couldn't match, and then highlighted the issues I had found with the other design firm's quote.
No response, no word of thanks, just double blue ticks and that was it, that was about 2 days ago, so I decided to delete the chat and drop her and her husband as a potential customer for the second time. I am not going to reach out and ask her about her decision because I am now selling them at a price that is bordering towards "not worth my time", if she reaches out and request to go even lower....sigh, if I were to really think about it, I might actually agree because I do really like the both of them, but I shouldn't and I won't!
What I REALLY need is to look for a new fucking job!
My job hunt was a huge bust, that's why I am now back to taking leads from my company, that being said, I am still actively seeking and applying, and the timing now is actually perfect for me because of how many projects I have on hand right now, which is close to zero.
For the first time in 3 years since I joined the company, I can actually see myself run out of projects to do, in the past, I would always have a few on the back burner, waiting to start months later, but this time, I literally have none, after I am done with my friend's project, I will no longer have any new ones that will be tying me down to this company.
A few days ago, a client I had met in the beginning of the year suddenly reached out to me and requested to meet again, I was a little surprise because the last time I met up with her and her husband, it was 3 months back, I had prepared a quote for them and ran through everything in person that time, and for me, the way I work is simple, I will give you all that you need for you to make a decision as a homeowner, you have my quotation and you have my proposal, I have done my part, if you are interested, then you will reach out to me, if not, then it was just not meant to be. I am not the type who will give the customer a call every few days to ask if they have made their decision yet because that is generally how a lot of Interior Designers in my line of work do things, just keeping in constant contact with the customer until the project is clinched or they get rejected. I try not to do that because I just find it very irritating, if I was the customer and the 5 interior designers that I have visited kept messaging me on a daily basis asking me to keep them updated on my decision, I will probably block their number, so I didn't do that to most of my customers unless I really really want to take their project, which honestly speaking only happened once and that particular customer ended up becoming a great source for new referrals, but anyways, because I wasn't reached out by them after the last meet up for 3 months, I pretty much dropped them as potential customers and deleted their number from my phone. I even vividly remember the last time we met, they were really interested but said among themselves...
"The price is a bit too high though..."
... so I also kinda knew that if I wanted to get their project, I would have to lower my price, which I wasn't willing to at that point because my price is the market average, I am not charging them higher than usual, the problem isn't with my quotation, the problem is with their budget.
Anyways, when the wife messaged me again recently, I had already deleted her contact so I had no idea who it was, luckily, the wife had a picture of her face as her display picture of her Whatsapp, so I instantly remembered who she was and she requested to meet on site with her husband. Their apartment is in the East, I live in the West, so location wise, this project was already sounding like a huge hassle to me.
My personal rule when it comes to doing projects that are located at an inconvenient location is simple, I don't take them.
I am a worry wort, I get stressed out very easily, when a client messages me about areas in the renovation they are unsatisfied with, my first instinct is to drop everything if I can and head to the site to assess the situation myself, if a sub-con tells me they have an issue that requires my clarification, even if it can be discussed over the phone, I would rather go to site and talk in person, happens all the time. They would call me and ask about something, I will tell them what they need to know, sit around at home or in the office for 15 minutes, mulling about whether I should head down to site to make sure everything is okay, and then pack up and head to site to make sure everything is okay in person, even though the sub-cons already have the answers they need to proceed with their work.
Anyways, because I really like these two clients as individuals, I agreed to the site meeting, we are able to click really well and they share the same sentiment, that is why despite the fact that they were able to find other Interior Design companies who were able to quote them at a lower rate than me, they still came back to me and requested a meet up.
So I don't take project that are located at an inconvenient location, but if I were to do it, there were certain conditions that are needed to be met.
1. I need to click really well with the customer, I need to like them enough to make me even want to consider taking on the hassle.
2. I needed to earn a generous amount of commission from it to make it worth the hassle.
... over the course of the last 5 months, I have met 2 clients who have projects that are located way too far for me to even consider, and those 2 were both equally unpleasant, one was the brick walls I met back in December and the other is actually Mr Antoinette's friend who was just demanding and very unpleasant to talk to via Whatsapp. If you are getting a free quotation, you don't get to have the privilege of giving me a deadline, it just reeks of entitlement, and I fucking hate that smell on clients who haven't sign a contract with me yet.
The brick walls actually reached out and wanted to meet, but I had to find an excuse to turn them down because I would just be looking for trouble if I actually took on their project.
Mr Antoinette's Friend went so far as to create a Whatsapp group, the only people who do that are the ones who are sure they want to engage me, I honestly am not sure where they were with their decision when they created the group chat, but that group chat has been silent since I updated the quote back in January, once I have gotten the Antoinette to pay up the final payment and officially complete that project, I am going to remove myself from his friends' Whatsapp group to let him know indirectly that I am not interested to take his project, because if I were to actually take on the project, I don't need to have good foresight to know that the Mr Antoinette's friend is going to be a complete and fucking utter nightmare to work with.
Anyways, I digress.
So the two clients showed me the quotations they had gotten from other Interior Design firms and they were all cheaper than mine, all the firms they had visited and receive quotes from are firms with huge reputations, my interior design firm is also pretty big as well, so this was not about which company is the best, but purely on who they liked more and they obviously liked me a lot more than the other Interior Designers they met from the other firms because otherwise, they wouldn't have bothered reaching out, they could have just signed a contract with one of the other design firms.
I took a copy of one the quotation from the other design firm to bring back to study, I could tell that the clients really wanted to engage me but my price was "too steep" for them, so I told them I will do my best to match the price and hopefully within a few days, can present them with some good news.
Well, attempting to match the price proved to be impossible.
The price was way too low and I was not comfortable going that low, especially because the location of the apartment was not exactly ideal for me. I tried to go as low as I could but my figures were still a few thousand dollars short, if I actually matched it figure for figure, my personal commission will be taking at least a $1000 cut, which I am simply not willing to sacrifice.
I also believe that the other design firm will have some sort of trick up their sleeves to earn that money back after the client signs up with them because once the homeowners are locked into the contract, the designers can and will very likely start adding in additional items, also known as "hidden cost', looking at the quote they shared with me, I already noticed a few key items were excluded from the quote and labelled as "optional", all in an attempt to lower the final figures.
I actually prepared my quote based on what the other design firm quoted them, and also did what they did by taking out key items and listing them as optional, I then send the quote to the client and wrote that I had already done my best but simply couldn't match, and then highlighted the issues I had found with the other design firm's quote.
No response, no word of thanks, just double blue ticks and that was it, that was about 2 days ago, so I decided to delete the chat and drop her and her husband as a potential customer for the second time. I am not going to reach out and ask her about her decision because I am now selling them at a price that is bordering towards "not worth my time", if she reaches out and request to go even lower....sigh, if I were to really think about it, I might actually agree because I do really like the both of them, but I shouldn't and I won't!
What I REALLY need is to look for a new fucking job!
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