Dear Sean,

I’ve got a healthy workload right now, but incoming inquiries have slowed considerably. Since the pandemic, I had implemented budget and scope minimums to help qualify leads. I’d love to keep my team busy heading into 2025, and have considered lowering those requirements to engage with us.

Here’s my question: Will it damage my business if I take a lower-budget job?

Minimum Spend

Dear Minimum Spend,

You only make two promises as a designer: to do your best work using your particular process, and to own and sign your name to the work with total commitment and pride. I could hedge and say that if you can meet those two promises with these lower-budget projects, then go right ahead. Except that, assuming we’re comparing apples to apples (the same size space with the same relative spend), these projects have lower budgets for a reason. The metrics of success are different, and you have moved beyond the metric of lower-budget jobs. So definitively, yes, you will damage your business if you take them on.

Competing on price is in fact the coward’s way out and a cop-out. You might think that being able to bring your overqualifications to a lower-budget project would bring tremendous value to those you seek to serve. You would be wrong. You have built your business (see your current healthy workload) to do the kinds of projects you and your team most want to do. My guess is that the skill sets you and your team now possess justify your value for these jobs. The investments you make in them demand a level of idiosyncrasy (i.e., maybe everyone on your team has to check measurements before the plan is released) that will not be honored by lower-budget gigs where creativity and diligence are likely sacrificed for efficiency.

This brings me to the larger point. You are in the effectiveness business, not the efficiency business; in other words, more for less likely is a fallacy. Instead, you should spend your client’s money in a manner that maximizes their ultimate enjoyment of their home and their lives there. Your path forward, regardless of economic circumstance, is to focus on just how you are going to improve your effectiveness.

Last, remember that you are standing in a crowded field of sheep, all thinking that the answer to reduced volume of inquiry is to debase what you do to meet the demands of those who are not your ideal clientele. If you go to Armani to purchase a beautiful dress, the last person you are likely to talk to is Giorgio himself, as he has long since forgotten about the current inventory. He cares about what has never existed, as do you and your current clients.

I understand it’s challenging when inquiries slow, but you have yet to tell me what you might do to improve the value you offer—not in terms of charging less for more scope, but rather of making the experience and result of working with you ever more iconic and singular. Perhaps you can consider this a wake-up call to pivot back to purpose and vision instead of simply being busy. You are not a factory, and merely aiming to keep the lights on is a great way to ensure you will never go beyond that basic purpose.

Better clients pay more, not less. You can argue the point and do lower-budget projects, but do not complain when the better clients find those designers who are not willing to compromise their standards no matter what is happening in the larger economy. Integrity matters most when you are challenged to walk the talk. Honor all that you have built by going further, even when it’s difficult. The best apples are always the ones still on the tree, no matter how nice the ones on the ground appear to be.

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Sean Low is the go-to business coach for interior designers. His clients have included Nate Berkus, Sawyer Berson, Vicente Wolf, Barry Dixon, Kevin Isbell and McGrath II. Low earned his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and as founder-president of The Business of Being Creative, he has long consulted for design businesses. In his Business Advice column for BOH, he answers designers’ most pressing questions. Have a dilemma? Send us an email—and don’t worry, we can keep your details anonymous.