273: Construction Management is Profitable 

Michele Williams: Hello, my name is Michele, and you're listening to Profit is a Choice.

On the podcast with me today is Renee Biery. She is a luxury interior designer and a podcast host. Her podcast is Only Girl on the Jobsite, and she's also a construction expert. We're going to have an amazing conversation about adding construction management to your design services and many of you are probably doing that already, some of the pitfalls, some of the things to watch out for, pricing, all the fun stuff that trips us up, but that we love to get right. Renee is an expert in those things. I invite you to enjoy the conversation with us.

Every day, empowered entrepreneurs are taking ownership of their company financial health and enjoying the rewards of reduced stress and more creativity. With my background as a financial software developer, owner of multiple businesses in the interior design industry, educator, and speaker, I coach women in the interior design industry to increase their profits, regain ownership of their bottom line, and to have fun again in their business. Welcome to Profit is a Choice. Hey, Renee, welcome to the podcast.

Renee Biery: Hi Michele. Thanks for having me.

Michele Williams: Oh, it's my pleasure. We have already had such a long, fun conversation, pre-recording, I'm sure we're still going to find plenty of things to talk about now that we're on camera and on audio.

Renee Biery: Absolutely. There's a lot to cover.

Michele Williams: Lots to cover. So, Renee, as we get started, I always like to, if you've listened to the podcast, I'm sure you have, I like to invite people to share a little bit of your story. Because I think what makes us all have so many things in common, but it can be easily brushed over. Like, I know you do construction management, and they might say, oh, I don't do construction, but there are pieces and parts of everything that you do that somebody else does, that they can see themselves kind of in your story somewhere. So, start and tell us just a little bit about your career path to get you where you are today.

Renee Biery: Sure. And yes, I agree. It's a very interconnected industry. I started, I was an anomaly in my peer group. I knew in high school that I wanted to be an interior designer, and so that was the only focus. I wanted to go to the New York School of Interior Design and get my undergraduate degree. They have a BFA program. And my parents said, no. He said, “I’m not going to pay for art school. You'll change your mind. What do you know? You're 18”. So, I went and got an undergraduate degree, chose a degree I liked, which happened to be sociology, and ended up at the New York School of Interior Design for my graduate work and have been practicing ever since. So that was 30 years ago this year. I do construction management because I love it and it's because I've always done it. So, the firms I started working with in New York happened to do that. It was not an intentionality, necessarily. It was just what most of them were doing. So, in other words, our client would buy the apartment above them, below them, left or right of them. Then we'd need to blow through. And, okay, now you've got two kitchens, two pantries, two powder rooms, and you had to make it all work. In an apartment building, you can't move a lot of waste stacks or any waste stacks. It was really challenging. There are fire doors you have to take into consideration. So, there was a lot of really intricate work that had to go into what a client would say is, “I'm simply combining apartments”. So that was really the beginning of my love for construction management, and I then sought out other firms that did that same work, but all along. And part of my passion is in the decorating side. Any construction project ends with, well, now we got to furnish it, whether it's a new space or a renovated space. So, I'm fortunate I am able to keep, I usually do about 60/40 construction projects to decorating. Some years that, you know, can shift to 70/30, some years it's, you know, 40/60. But I've been able to do consistent construction work for the past 30 years. It also led me into a short stint in commercial work. I was doing hospitals, banks, law firms, and I learned a whole lot about systems and more of a programmatic perspective. I also learned that I don't enjoy it. Right. There wasn't as much joy. Basically, if we hit the budget and the presentation was nothing outrageous, you're standing in a room or presenting in a room of maybe ten guys, and they're all like, yeah, it looks good, go. And it wasn't that, I don't want to say it wasn't a great challenge. While I understand why some designers prefer commercial work because there is less drama, I only lasted about two years in commercial work, but I do use those skills to this day.

Michele Williams: It's interesting I mentioned to you, and I know my podcast listeners know both my sons are in commercial construction. And what's so interesting about it is I think it's the emotional tie. Like, if you were to look at what the challenge is, there are still plenty of challenges in commercial work. I mean, I know that you know that and you agree with me, but the challenge is the emotional connection with the work. And when we do residential, there is a huge emotional component because we are in someone's home. We're in their private living space. It is a different relationship with the furnishings. Commercial, it's outside of us and it's outside of them. Like, they may have really strong ideas, but the emotional, they're not living there. They're not building their life around that, in the same way. And so, there is a disconnect there. It very much is, it's more of a black-and-white presentation. This is what it is. You know, the thought that keeps coming into my brain is kind of like, “A League of Their Own” where Tom Hanks yells at her, "There's no crying in baseball". It's kind of like that in commercial design. There's really just not a lot of emotion and crying. I mean, the emotions, probably more irritation, domination, you know, anger, frustration. You have emotion, but it's not the same thing. And on the residential side, you know, there are tears and there's excitement. And I'm not talking bad tears. It's just a whole different thing. I can appreciate that. Yeah, right. I totally appreciate that. So, I'm curious. I know you do both, and you enjoy both. When you thought, as that young girl, I want to go into design, were you thinking about the construction management piece, or were you thinking more about the decorating, the beautiful, more of the form versus the function? Were you thinking more of along those lines?

Renee Biery: Absolutely. I did not recognize any desire. Don't remember thinking about it. Now, that said, I've always been very handy. I always joke and even with the contractors when I'm pitching in to help, I said my father didn't have sons, and so I had to pitch in and learn, you know things. For instance, I went to college with a toolbox made by my father. I was the most popular girl on the dorm because I had the hammer that they needed for their posters or what have you. And so, there is always that interest, and when I went to school at the time, the school was run by architects, which at the time, I thought nothing of that. Now, I thought that was really unusual. Like, the dean of students was an architect. And so, again, I'm old enough where we were taught more drafting than CAD work. My drafting teacher was really pivotal in really opening my eyes to that world. She was so cool. She told us that she drafted ink on linen for the city of New York in the early stages of her career. Now, we were at the very end of her career. Can you imagine? Like, I am so uptight about my drawings.

Michele Williams: I would want to frame that. That feels like a piece of art to me.

Renee Biery: I mean, talk about no room for error.

Michele Williams: And talk about precision, because ink on linen and the way that it can run and spread out like it does on certain types of paper, you know what I mean, that are very fibery. Like, all I can think of is you had to have a tiny pen, and you had to be so precise. Like, there is no room to mess that up.

Renee Biery: No room for error. Plus, what she didn't tell us. And there's a group of four of us from design school that are still best friends, and we all had Joan as a teacher, and we all talked about it later. We're like, was she the only woman as that was not a female-populated industry? And so, she would tell us in class, I am teaching you how to draw things you cannot legally seal. You will never be able to legally present this and pull permits from, like, an HVAC system. We were drawing all of that, and at the time, I was, what, 22? I was like, okay. Never questioned it, never thought it. I was like, well, the teacher says to do this, ergo, I'll do it. She would say, I want you to be able to sit at a table of men and know what they're talking about, add value to their conversation, and be respected. And again, at 22, I was like, okay, sounds good. Had I known then those insane pearls of wisdom and how that would be a through-line of my career. We have always said that Joan is really because all four of us have always done construction management in one form or another, it's really amazing. I also just put it all together. My grandfather was an engineer. He built plants for the Dupont company, and I would pour over his drawings in the basement. I thought they were fascinating, but it never occurred to me that those two would merge.

Michele Williams: Yeah, the seeds that were planted. You know, it even makes me think with Joan, you know, it was like in the eighties before a woman could even get credit on her own or start a business bank account. I think women first got the opportunity to have a bank account without the signature of a Man in the seventies, but a business bank account they could not have until the mid-eighties. So, when she's talking about women were not allowed to do those things, she's not wrong. “The Chemist” or something like that? It was a show, I think it was, like on Netflix. It was an adaptation of a book or something, but she was, like a chemistry major, and they would not let women be chemists. And she was the one that was finding all of these things. And they show these pictures of her, like, in a room, and it's all these men, and she's there. And the only way to get her, ideas up through the top was to tell a man and have the man tell it like it had to be. And then the papers are written, and her name was left off of them. Just all kinds of things that we see. It’s interesting because I kind of feel like I'm pushing that same kind of ball up the hill. But for women with financial understanding, right?

Renee Biery: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Michele Williams: We weren't invited to those tables. We weren't taught these things the same way. You and I are similar in age, and it just was. It was almost unheard of. And so, you know, it was just a very different time. Women could be in the banking industry, but they were usually like a teller or maybe a loan officer, but not in the upper echelons. And a lot of cases it was, and some were, but it was very few and far between. Absolutely like that. So, we are so blessed to be today where women have so many opportunities to be equal with men in our understanding and in our learning and the ways that we show up. And so there also comes up with a lot of responsibility. We better know what we're doing. You know, I feel kind of like the weight is heavier on us sometimes to come and to show.

I've also seen studies where it says, I thought this was interesting. Men will tell you they've done it and are, great at it before they have fully accomplished it. Women usually wait till they fully accomplished it, and then they'll tell you if you ask, but they're not usually as fast to say, I'm great at that, where a guy would say it a little bit faster, even if the woman has more experience than the guy does. Just fascinating absolutely. From a psychology and sociology that's fast to me. You know, like, I got it. And we're over here thinking, I need to have had it 14 times with a written process, and I need to have it buttoned up. And they're like, they've never done it before, but they're just ok. I think it's that. I think it's the same thing that makes them jump off the monkey bars faster than girls in a lot of cases. It's that confidence that they just kind of have, in some cases that we work hard to get. So, it's nice to see it showing up.

Renee Biery: We work very hard to get it. And I think our industry is lacking behind, lagging behind a lot of the other industries as far as seen as equals on construction projects. I wish I could tell you why, but it doesn't seem to have caught up in the same way as other industries.

Michele Williams: Yep. I have a client that had a male employee. And when she would go to some of these construction meetings, even though she's the one with all the degrees, all the information, doing the majority of all the work, she would take him with her because she had kind of been stonewalled and not listened to, and she would let him kind of say the same. That's almost like the reverse, right? And here he was not credentialed, not degreed, none of the things that she had. But she finally was like, at some point, I can sit here and demand all day, or we can just move on. She's had to find ways to work around that where some, in some instances, in a good old boy network, she's got to get the guy to say what she needs him to say. Her work looks a little different now, but they would prep before they went into those meetings so that they could come joint and say things; to just get it done so they could move on and do the work. Yes. So, absolutely.

Renee Biery: I was, like, not surprised at all.

Michele Williams: We're in the 2020s. This is still going on, but it's true. But again, here's the thing. Women should not be afraid of this, because the majority of the designers that I work with, and, not everyone, but the majority of them do some version of renovation or new construction, which means they are on that job site and they are looking at the plans, and they're having these discussions with the builders and with the architects. I can tell you, and you've probably seen this borne out in your work as well, personally and in your coaching and in your mentorship, if you can show up and do the job really well, you will gain such huge respect by your peer group. And now they won't think of doing a job without you. Because I'm seeing a lot of my designers. They're being called by the architect. They're being called by the builder. We don't want to do this if you're not in it. Like, they are recommending them back because them really showing up and doing that job well without a bunch of tears and drama and stuff that kind of get assigned to us, even if that's not the case. Right. Just because of gender. They just show up and just be professional and do what they're hired to do. It creates a beautiful, synergistic relationship, where they want them there and they see the value they understand. Once they prove the value, it becomes nonnegotiable.

Renee Biery: 100%. I think that's where designers can trip themselves up unintentionally. They see themselves as the outsider, as the only girl on the job site, and it's very easy to just stay in that role and say, okay, well, here I am. I'm going to suffer through another meeting, and they might talk down to me. They might ignore me. They might just simply dismiss me altogether. The problem is, you will create that, right? If you treat yourself as another, they will continue to treat you as another because, yes, automatically they do see you as another because you are. I constantly encourage designers. You are a team member. You are of the same team. The only one in charge of that project is the client paying for it. All the rest of us have identical roles in different subjects. Right. We have come from a different profession, all with the same goal. We want that client's project from a to b. That's it. And when designers go in and feel very insecure, I'm the same way, you tend to get a little brash. Right. You're coming off, trying to overcompensate for your insecurities. And unfortunately, that feeds the stereotype, like you mentioned, right? Oh, she's being bitchy. Oh, she's being pushy.

Michele Williams: That's right. That's right.

Renee Biery: Exactly. And you're handing them.

Michele Williams: Unfortunately, then it becomes self-fulfilling. Right.

Renee Biery: Exactly. You're handing them reasons. Oh, remember how she talked to us last week? Yeah. I'm not going to listen to her anymore. It seems so simple, but it is absolutely pivotal in the relationship when you become mentally a teammate, as opposed to someone who believes they're in charge. Even if I do the drawings, I am not in charge. Even if I built the team, I am not in charge. I am a team member, and we're coordinating together. It's like colleagues at work. And so, when you know, I talked to someone who came out of the financial industry, I said, you have a boss. You have people that are under you, and then you have colleagues. I said you treat a contractor like you treat your colleagues. You're collaborating together. You're asking their opinions. You're, by the way, taking their opinions and their concerns and their suggestions. It’s not an insult. It's not a put-down. And she's like, oh, yeah, that makes perfect sense. But we are so mired in our, oh, my gosh, I don't know what I'm doing. I shouldn't be here. They're treating me like I shouldn't be here, that they can't have, you can't turn that off, and therefore, you're missing out. So, what you mentioned was what I call industry partners, and your industry partners are the means to fill your pipeline. If you are sitting there relying only on your clients, both present and past, that is a very small group of people are discounting the fact that every contractor and architect, every single one of their clients could be a client of yours.

Michele Williams: That's right.

Renee Biery: Every single one.

Michele Williams: What's interesting is when we show up in a space, already personally aware that we deserve to be in the space, we don't feel like we have something to prove. And so just coming into the space, I also like to think about it as being on the same side of the table where you talked about, we're colleagues. If we look at this, trying to get from a to b, if I'm on the same side of the table with, with the architect and the builder and the contractors, and we're all working together to get to be, then it mentally puts me in the space that when they're saying something, they're not coming at me. They're trying to sharpen me or sharpen the project or sharpen the outcome. Right. They're actually, we're working together in cohorts, in concert to make this happen. Now, that doesn't mean that everybody on the team is going to receive it as well.

Renee Biery: That's right.

Michele Williams: But I do think not having the chip on the shoulder, but also not being apologetic for having an idea and an opinion and for sharing it. So almost like a calm, quiet confidence that I'm here with my being here and my speaking up has nothing to do with your idea of whether I should or should not be here. Like, I've had to work on that over my 50-plus years, right?

Renee Biery: Oh, absolutely.

Michele Williams: I'm here because I have a right to be here. And it is not predicated on your belief system for me to be here. Right. I just am.

Renee Biery: It doesn't end.

Michele Williams: And if you disarm it by asking for input, what do you think about this? Hey, have you done something similar? What did you do? What was the outcome? What would you change? If we start inviting other people into the conversation, like you said, instead of looking at it as us and them, as long as we know what we're doing and they know what they're doing, it's going to work out. Nine times out of ten, it's going to work out just fine.

Renee Biery: And not only will it just work out, but you will learn. So when I design something, I had a designer tell me. She said, well, I created this built-in, and the guy said he just couldn't build it. I said, what do you mean he couldn't build it? Do we not have wood in the world? What exactly did he say?

Michele Williams: Yes.

Renee Biery: And she said, well, he said he couldn't do it the way I designed it. And I said, okay, what was his suggestion? She goes, oh, I didn't ask. I was so upset, I just left. And I said, okay, so you now need to go back and it's okay. You know, it's funny, we all think that we need to be an expert on day one. But that contractor, that carpenter, had a first day, a first month, a first year, a first decade perhaps, where he was also learning. And by the way, I'm 30 years in, I'm still learning.

Michele Williams: That's right. We learn on every project. Don’t you learn something on every project?

Renee Biery: Every single project.

Michele Williams: Yep. even if it's don't do that.

Renee Biery: And if I didn't, I probably would have left by now. Right. Like, it keeps me coming back. How boring to do the same thing in this rote manner over and over. And so, she did. She went back to the guy, and she said, okay, this is my design intent, how can we build it? And beautiful. They had this lovely conversation. She walked away with a whole lot more information. So that on that next project, guess what? She's going to design it that way.

Michele Williams: That's right. It will be taken into account. You know, it's even true. Like, even sometimes when we do custom window treatments. We'll have, if the designer can show up when they're trying to either put up the hardware and do certain things right, or even the workroom, see those things, then we can design around it to make it happen. It happens to all of us. You know, it's so funny, why we put so much pressure on ourselves to know all the answers. I tell my clients all the time. I'm like, if some. If you get asked a question that you just don't know the answer to, instead of saying, oh, my gosh, I'm clueless, like, don't do that. I said my answer was always something along the lines of, wow, this is really interesting. There are probably two or three ways this can be solved. What I'm going to do is go research, which is the best application for this. Because the truth of the matter is there usually is two or three ways that we can do anything. And so, what you're doing is you're saying, I don't have it right now, but my brain is already going in a couple of paths for how we can get to the end result that we need. I'm going to go research what's going to fit the time, the budget, the expertise, you know, whatever. We have resources available, and then I'll come back to you. Honestly, that's all people want. And if they want that, you've got to answer me, and you got to answer me now. That's probably not a client we want to work with anyway, and that's a big red flag because now they're bullying me to answer something that I'm not prepared to answer. And so if we can just have confidence and that we don't have to know everything on the spot, but what we have is we have resources that allow us to go out and to find that answer and then come back and present it with a confidence and a budget and a timeline and the resources needed, then that kind of brings the pressure down, right?

Renee Biery: Absolutely.

Michele Williams: For others and for us.

Renee Biery: Well, think about it. On a specific job site, I mean, you might have five or six different trades. So, the electrician is an expert in electricity. He might know some carpentry, framing, things like that, but that's it. You might know a little about plumbing, but that's it. His expertise is in one trade, but yet we're expected to come on a site and be an expert in electrical work, plumbing work, framing, windows, doors, floors.

Michele Williams: And then all the furnishings and all the things that go around it.

Renee Biery: It is simply absurd to think that we could be, and frankly, you shouldn't present yourself as I'm an expert in all these, because it's not humanly possible. But what I find is designers are also, in those moments, afraid to admit, I don't know something. To your point, we want to immediately resolve it. We want the pain to go away. We want the embarrassment to go away. Okay, let me go look into it. Because you're right. There's always something. There's always more than one way to do it. And over time, those same ways, those evolve as well.

Michele Williams: That's right. Or a new product that you're like, oh, I didn't even know I could do that. Oh, you mean I don't even need to plug that in? I can have something that doesn't have to plug in, and everybody's cutting cords on Amazon everywhere and add a light bulb in there.

Renee Biery: But you know what else I do? And I don't do it in a condescending way, but I will walk up to an electrician and say, what are you doing? I am so fascinated. I've not seen this before. Everybody likes to talk about what they're confident in. And I challenge any designer listening to the next job site you go on to walk up to the trade that you really don't know what they're doing or really why. And obviously, you don't ask it in an adversarial way. Like, what are you doing? You just say you know what? I find this fascinating.

Michele Williams: I'm curious.

Renee Biery: Tell me, what are you doing? And, you know, what should I be looking out for on my next project? I guarantee you they will all stop or maybe continue what they're doing but tell you what they're doing. And in the process, you are establishing a rapport. You're building know, like, and trust, and you're learning.

Michele Williams: And when, when there's a huge respect there, because you asked instead of making an assumption, right, or acted like, you know, they can tell if you don't really know what you're talking about, and you talk. Let me ask you this, Renee. Why do you think now, not after that conversation, we wouldn't scare off the world? Not meant to do so. But why do you think that some designers are really fearful of this? Because the majority of them, whether it's a whole home build or whether it's a renovation, I would say at least the designers I work with, I don't know any that only do furnishings. I don't know any, back in the day, I worked with some that just did design plans or just did furnishings. But the majority of designers that I work with and know, today at least, that have been in their business for a few years, it might change. There’s some type of construction management and every single one of them, but. But they're so fearful of going into that, right?

Renee Biery: They're already in it.

Michele Williams: See, that's my point.

Renee Biery: That's already in it, and they aren't taking the credit for it, so to speak. So, when I started my podcast, it was a Covid baby, and it was directed to homeowners.

Michele Williams: Tell us the name of your podcast since we're talking about that.

Renee Biery: Only Girl on the Jobsite, because that is how I feel. And it started during COVID because I live 5 miles south of Pennsylvania, and during COVID, Pennsylvania shut down construction. So, I had ongoing projects that I was not physically allowed to go to. And this was pre-zoom, so that we were Facetiming, and it was crazy, right? But those contractors were sneaking in and still working. So, the homeowner was trying to manage it, and it wasn't going well, to say the least. And she's a very difficult client. And at one point, she got extremely frustrated, and she said, “I just don't understand why there can't be a manual. There's just got to be a manual on how I can do this”. I essentially hung up the phone, and we have since parted ways because I don't like working with people like that. But that stuck with me, and the whole rest of the day, I thought, yeah, sure, there's a manual. Now, it's not going to take into consideration the nuances of every project, but just like any construction project, there is an order of events, and that just never left me. And so, I started the podcast Only Girl on the Jobsite during COVID to talk to homeowners about how they could make their way through their own projects, because any designer listening has had a friend or a neighbor tell them ad nauseam about all of the disasters they had, about how horrible their projects were, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And you do, you get kind of tired of hearing about it. And so, designers started showing up within weeks, and I just assumed they were checking me out, like, oh, what's she up to? And then the emails came, and the DM's came. I'm on this site, Renee. I am in over my head. What do I do about this? And at first, I thought it was a fluke, and then they just kept coming. And I realized, you know, again, because my girlfriends from design school and I have always done this, you know, I don't know what, you know, I'm not in touch with a lot of designers. This, again, was pre-Zoom, and, or Zoom was a baby at that point. And I realized, like holy cow, there are a lot of designers on these projects that don't know what they're doing. Or worse, they know what they're doing, and they aren't giving themselves the credit.

Michele Williams: That's right.

Renee Biery: And so, I immediately, frankly, I literally just stopped talking to homeowners. And the next episode was all for designers, because, I mean, I obviously, if I've stayed in this business for 30 years, I truly love this industry. I want it to be seen as a higher-level profession than it is. We were promised in the nineties. It's coming. It's coming.

Michele Williams: Yes.

Renee Biery: Yeah. I have it all. I have my NCIDQ. I have my, you know, top design school degree with honors. Yeah, it's still not coming. So, I'm not waiting for it.

Michele Williams: We have to create it ourselves.

Renee Biery: I'm trying to help it along myself. And so, again, like I mentioned earlier, I started in the industry working for others, so all of my mistakes were absorbed by someone else's company. And at the time, I obviously knew it because I was like, oh, God, am I going to be in trouble? But I didn't get fired. But most designers don't have that luxury.

Michele Williams: When it's our own business, we're absorbing the mistakes.

Renee Biery: Correct. And frankly, on construction projects, they can be really big numbers. And so, I really do believe that what I started hearing. Sorry, what I started hearing was, I got dragged into this kitchen. My client really wanted me to do her bathroom. And so, they actually weren't even recognizing this skill in themselves. Their clients were, which is amazing, right?

Michele Williams: Yes.

Renee Biery: But then they still aren't buying into it themselves. They aren't sort of taking that label, so to speak, and making it a part of their own. And I joke with designers, but I'm not kidding. When I started changing how I introduced myself anywhere, I don't mean with professionals, but with social things, whether it's at school or a cocktail party or a holiday event, they'd say, oh, what do you do for a living? And of course, I would say, I'm an interior designer. And more often than not, the conversation would be, oh, that sounds so fun. Or my cousin is an interior designer, or my mom has a great sense of color, and you're sitting there forced to go, isn't that, oh, wonderful. Oh, that's exciting for them. And you're going, okay, this is done, and the conversation almost always ended. Now, I switched to, or years ago, I switched to, I am an interior designer, and I specialize in construction management. Boom. I mean, it's almost kind of funny at this point, the look on their eyes, and they're like, wait, what'd you say? What? Oh, what does that mean? Wait, what do you do? Now is that person going to hire me? No, but I do feel that we need to be broadcasting what we're already doing and we're not. When I started the podcast, I was sure there was no reason to. I was sure someone else was talking about it. My husband was like, really, Renee? Yeah, there's got to be someone else out there. I looked and I looked. I looked. People do talk about it, but not solely. And I thought, why? Why are we not talking about something that we're all doing?

Michele Williams: We're really reducing. I use it as kind, of the word just right. That just is a diminisher. I'm just a designer. No. No, you're not. I see this. I'll tell you another place. I see this, which is very interesting to me, and that is where women who or men who are selling custom window treatments, and they're selling them in the home to the homeowner, and they don't see themselves as a window treatment designer or a window treatment specialist, but that's what they're doing. And a lot of them will say, oh, well, I go home and make them, too. Okay, awesome. So now you're a drapery workroom and a window treatment specialist, selling retail and designing what it's going to be. But by not owning it, they don't charge for it.

Renee Biery: Correct.

Michele Williams: And so, what you don't own, you don't charge. That's why my tagline is, what you own, you can change. What own, you can charge for. So, if we're not fully owning what we're bringing to the table, I can promise you our pricing and our profitability will reflect that every single time. I see the &Ls to prove it.

Renee Biery: A woman DM’d me the other day. She said, “I just found your podcast, and I wanted to run something by you because I think I'm doing this work. I think I've been doing it for a while and I'm not charging for it”. And then she listed out what she was doing and my heart wept. She is knee-deep with almost ten years of experience. She's not charging for it. I know we had a quick conversation about that.

Michele Williams: Yeah. Every day I see it, not understanding. I told you before we got on, I listened to one of your, podcasts this morning, and it was on, pricing and making that really clean scope of work, like down to the nitty gritty scope of work, not just using an estimator or a square foot without really looking at what it stands for. I told you I was high-fiving my husband who was like, “She's in line with you”, because I was in the bathroom with the podcast going, and he had to listen to it, too.

Renee Biery: Poor guy.

Michele Williams: Yeah, he's used to it by now. And I said, he's like, she's in line with what you're saying. I'm like, absolutely she is. I said because we've learned it doesn't take very much to realize, ah, flat fees and all that. That's great if you really know what you're doing, but it has got to be so crystal clear. And I loved your whole sorry, not sorry. You do have to keep up with the time. We just have to keep up with the time. And so, honestly, keeping up with time, keeping up with the work we're doing, and recognizing that we're doing it because it's easy to not recognize that we're doing it when we don't list it out. So, I kind of can see, or I definitely see how those go together and why we don't price for all of it. If we didn't list it out in detail, we can't recognize that we're doing it because we just do it, and then we're not pricing for it because we didn't recognize it, and we didn't charge for it. So, the more you can detail out what you do, how you do it, your job description, just write your job description. That will be enough for you to realize what you do. Write down every single thing that you do, and then look at it. Your job description and the title of your job description are going to change. I will tell you that the majority of the women that I talk to, and men as well, we do better to introduce ourselves as a business owner who focuses on design because design is a very small part of what we do. We miss out on the whole fact that we're running a company that we're CEO, that we are visionary like that, has a role to play as well. We are not just anything. I've gotten to where I'm like, I'm a founder and CEO of multiple companies, and this is what we do. And because it's a broader understanding of the space that I am taking up, because of the things that I've already done.

Renee Biery: And I think as far as pricing, it goes, again, back to the confidence. Even those who know what they should be charging, or they already are charging, they aren't charging what they believe they are worth because they're uncertain of their worth. And so, when the designers were listening to the podcast emailing me, it really just morphed into a course, because, again, just like the homeowners, I can create a guidebook that takes you literally from marketing yourself in the first place, all the way through taking the photographs, thanking the client, and pivoting to the next project. I did not include pricing when I first launched it to the designers because I was in the throes of evaluating that on my own. And I tell on the podcast, I only talk about what I've done, because I can speak from my own experience, and I wasn't sure how it was going to come out in the end. I have always. I mean, for 22 years, I mean, you know, 20. Well, on my own, I have been for 22 years with my own firm, billing hourly, it made sense to me. All the women I worked for in New York billed hourly. It made sense. Time worked. Time billed, right? The clients understood it. Everybody just seemed normal. And frankly, back in the day, that was all that was being done. I would say about eight or nine years ago, probably pre-Covid design friends of mine were beating me up. You gotta go to flat fees, Renee. You gotta go. And I'm like, nope, I'm comfortable. My clients love it. I'm making good profits. Leave me alone. You know, I just, you know, we don't like change. I didn't really want to take on that, but I was listening to a podcast, and then it was also resonating through your podcast. Well, first of all, let me back up. People say, oh, I didn't go to design school. Guess what? I did not have business classes in my design program. I loved my program. I learned so much except how to run a business. And so, what I learned was the better I'm getting at my job, the more I'm penalizing myself because I am much more efficient. I have the resources, and I'm not charging the same I did before to research and find all of those resources. That was what really was, I'm not gonna lie, a punch in the gut. Right.

Michele Williams: Because your only lever is to either go up on the hourly rate or to start bundling things together to charge a value price. That's your only option.

Renee Biery: Correct.

Michele Williams: Or you're losing money for gaining knowledge.

Renee Biery: So, I took about a year of research, and what I found was even more frustrating. And I ditched the idea multiple times because I couldn't find any two designers that were doing flat fees the same way. I'm sort of a mathematical person. Obviously, that's the drafting side in my brain. I said, nope, screw it. I knew it wasn't going to work for me, but I kept kind of massaging it and working it and then developed this flat fee structure. I added that to the course about six months ago. I'll be honest, I held my breath because it isn't a calculator. I don't believe a calculator or square footage is the absolute. Now, do I sometimes use those for checks and balance to get a range? Yes, I absolutely will look back on my historical data and say, okay, well, I did a kitchen that was similar to this, and okay, yeah, so this is working. This worksheet I have is. Yeah, okay. And it. It basically makes me feel good about myself. That's all it does. But until you know your role and the phases of construction and the client.

Michele Williams: And the other client and the other colleagues that you're working with, and.

Renee Biery: Exactly. That's why those calculators, those cheat sheets don't work. The complexities of the project are nullified on those calculators.

Michele Williams: That's right. And we're looking for a fast track, though, Renee. I think a lot of people are.

Renee Biery: Guilty is charged same.

Michele Williams: They're looking for this fast track, and the truth of the matter is, we don't need to fast-track our pricing.

Renee Biery: No.

Michele Williams: Because that's what bites us later. If we would take the same amount of care and attention to put together our own scope of work, our own internal budget for time and money. Not just money. Time and money. If we're looking at the raw material that creates pricing, and we're doing our work really, really well, and we're adding in for what we do not know. The same way that, you add an overage when you're doing tile or doing flooring, we always add-in, and it varies. It can be 10%, 15%, 20% based on the product and how you have to get it. I add in 20% every time on a flat fee. For what I do not know. Even if I were to quote you, hours and say, I think it's going to take, we used to double our hours. Like, if I thought something was going to take me 4 hours, I would say it's going to be between four and 8 hours because I don't know what I don't know until I open it up. And so, are you okay with four to 8 hours? If it's more than that, after we open it up, we will let you know. Then what I've done is I've given myself space within my quote to do things. I've said, these are the things that are not going to be covered in a flat fee. Custom furniture that's not going to be covered because I got to go back and forth with the craftsman to do that. I can't build that in unless the flat fee is huge, which could be much larger than I need it to be. So just knowing the mechanics of it, to your point, and taking that year to look and then stress testing it against the hours that it actually takes, or the new ways of doing things, or the people that you're working with or something, just even driving around New York or Boston and the fees and moving up and having to come up a back elevator like there's so much additional that kind of goes into it. $13 a square foot, $24 square foot is not going to cut it unless you know every single thing and it was defined with all of those variables already as part of that number, and we don't do that. We just throw a number, we ask around, you know, what is the number that you're charging per square foot? And then we multiply it and we're like, well, I should be able to do it for that because Renee does it for that, so why can I not do it for that?

Renee Biery: And I'm in those Facebook groups. I see those questions and I will, you know, grab a piece of paper and do the math. I'm going, oh, they're probably not gonna do well. Oh, lord, I hope they're okay. Yeah. And here's the other argument I make as far as taking the time, and when I am working on a large project, it can be hours. I actually will put it aside, clear my head. Yep. Come back the next day. And I always change it more. Sometimes less, sometimes more. But these projects, I mean, a bathroom renovation, right? A pretty simple bathroom renovation. Twelve weeks. So why are you trying to find a calculator on a project that you're investing all that time in? You really want to make sure that at the end of that project, not only is it beautiful, that the client is happy, but that you were paid what you deserved to be paid, and that is subjective. Right. And depending on where you are, depending on the years’ experience and all sorts of nuances, the complexity, the team, the client. but I also see designers missing the mark in procurements. I have always added procurements into my construction projects. It is not just furniture that I mark up. And I know their designers right now, gasping, because they're like, oh, I couldn't possibly. And my biggest pushback is, why not? They never have an answer to that. Oh, well, the contractor does that. Why? Well, because he's always done that. Okay. That doesn't mean he has to continue doing it.

Michele Williams: Right. We've had that discussion a lot in a lot of my coaching groups. And it honestly boils down to having a conversation.

Renee Biery: Absolutely.

Michele Williams: And it may be a split. Here are the things and it  I typically is, and here are the things you're going to do. And honestly, even we were talking about it the other day, looking further into where's the biggest liability if it goes wrong? Yeah, because I can take the liability maybe on a light fixture, maybe I don't want to take it on plumbing that's behind the wall, where the tiles are going.

Renee Biery: So, I am going to add this.

Michele Williams: Making some conversations about it.

Renee Biery: Now, I will say this as far as liability, and every state, every country has its own set of liability concerns. So, for instance, the contractor purchased the plumbing. The contractor is not the one installing it. The plumbers install it. So, the plumber is taking the liability for the installation. So, who is taking responsibility for the physical fixture, the actual spout?

Michele Williams: That's right.

Renee Biery: So, if it's Kohler, then Kohler is taking the responsibility. It is not Michele's responsibility that Kohler produced a product that was, whatever, defective in some way. It is not the contractors. I know designers get hung up on the liability, but the thing is, it's the same thing as if you are purchasing a light and the light has a defect in it. It is not Michele's responsibility for the liability of the light it is who she purchased it from.

Michele Williams: Right.

Renee Biery: Because if Visual Comfort made that light, Visual Comfort has to follow through in it. And so, that's always my pushback to designers. I'm like, you're dealing with liability issues already. Every sofa that comes in damaged, the rug comes in damage. You're just changing the product. Now you're talking about a tub spout, or a tile that came in discolored, but the tile installer takes responsibility for the installation.

Michele Williams: Well, and my point, and I agree with you, my point in all this is it has to be a discussion early because they're going to build their pricing and they're going to make up for the profit that they would have made in a different place. But they've got to know in advance of their pricing to the client. If you are not getting every single thing and you're needing, you know, you've split it, perhaps, and you've got to make up for whatever it was that you had expected to be profit on this job, you need to know it before you offer your pricing to the client. Just like when I have people that say, I'm going to have a smaller markup on product, they may charge more per hour to balance it out because they're pricing levers that we can move up and down. So just the earlier we have these conversations, the better.

Renee Biery: And I will say, just as a practicality standpoint, it's never the same time. I would say if out of 100 projects, I would say 80 of them, I was brought in after the contractor was hired and signed off on. So, in his contract already existed, you know, tile, but it's always an allowance. That's where you start negotiating.

Michele Williams: That's right.

Renee Biery: So that contractor actually isn't counting on that profit yet because his numbers for an allowance are pathetic. They're just a formula. They never match what a client wants. And so that's where the negotiating comes.

Michele Williams: Where the spending habits of the day.

Renee Biery: Correct. So, you unfortunately don't always see the contractor's contract before you present your pricing.

Michele Williams: Right.

Renee Biery: That said, I have never been on a job where I haven't done some procurements. It’s typically the allowances I go after because yet again, I'm the one helping specify that tile. And what I find is, even if there is a rub, you know, I'll tell the contractor, hey, he's expecting, by the way, me to go find that tile. He's not doing that with the client. I'll have the discussion along the way. Hey, we went to the tile store, and you know that you know, $4 a square foot price, well, we're in stone. We're in natural stone. We're not even close to that. We're going to be probably double that. And I'm going to source it for her. And you sort of throw that out there. And again, it depends on your relationship with the contractor. And you test the water. Fine. You get the resource. I'm going to be doing the purchasing. Oh, okay. Well, in this case, I think I'm going to do the purchasing. It's from a vendor I use specifically. Contractors don't have vendor relationships with everyone. You have, and you negotiate, maybe you split it, maybe you, whatever. But that allowance is where you can start targeting because unfortunately, you don't always see the contract before you present your own pricing. So, knowing in advance is something you shouldn't count on, which means you can't impact that can't impact your flat fee. So, you, no matter what, want to dial in your flat fee for your time as accurately as humanly possible so that the procurements are additional income.

Michele Williams: That's right. We want to live off of the flat fees and the design time and the rest of it, to me, is gravy.

Renee Biery: Correct.

Michele Williams: So, Renee, we could probably talk for six more days. I know that we could tell people where they can find you. Where are you hanging out these days?

Renee Biery: Sure. Well, my podcast, Only Girl on the Jobsite, you can find it on my website, www.deVignierdesign.com, or on any of the platforms that stream them. And the best way, probably, is to sign up for our newsletter. I send out a Friday newsletter, basically talking about more of the industry. And so, there's the podcast on Tuesdays and the newsletter on Fridays, and then there's the course, The Interior Designer's Guide to Construction Management. All the information there can be found on the website as well. It's a really robust five-module, over 85 lessons. But I promise they're bite-sized because I know we are all short on time. It includes these pricing spreadsheets, pricing lessons on how to take those nuances and really understand how that will impact your pricing on that specific job, and how to develop that scope of work. What are you missing? And how to market yourself. Like I said earlier, start telling people. And that's just step one. And how to build those industry partners that will continue filling your pipeline of work where you almost don't have, I don't want to say never, you almost have to, don't have to do your own marketing when you have people out there who want you to be on their projects.

Michele Williams: That's exactly right.

Renee Biery: we have a private Facebook group where we all share our highs and lows as well as questions in between. It's just really become, as I told you earlier, it's a community that I didn't know and certainly didn't plan for in my thinking in 2024 where we would be. But it's incredible to be able to support designers doing what I love to do.

Michele Williams: That's awesome. Well, I look forward to talking to you more and being able to share some work back and forth. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today, and I wish you a great day.

Renee Biery: Thank you for having me. You as well.

Michele Williams: Renee, thank you so much for joining us today on Profit is a Choice. It's true, profit is a choice. And we're choosing to be profitable by owning, who we are and what we do, by taking up the space that is ours to take up, by charging what we're worth, and by managing and doing the work effectively and efficiently.

I also want to encourage you, if you are looking at your financials and you're looking at your business and you're thinking, oh my gosh, how am I making money? I don't know what I'm doing or don't know where the money's coming in and out, I would love to help you look at the financial aspect of your business. We have a couple of opportunities to do that. We have our CFO2GO where we're going to jump in and do a deep dive into all things financial and not only show you what's been happening but help you set up a plan with budgets and KPIs to move you forward so that there's never a question again about what am I doing and how am I doing it financially. You'll have all these answers.

We also have an opportunity in our coaching program. You can go to our website at scarletthreadconsulting.com, and go to the Work With Me page and, fill out a form. We would love to talk with you and see how we can support you best. We also can help you on the Metrique side, Metriquesolutions.com. That is our software that allows you to keep up with all your financials and have all the answers that you need just with a couple of clicks of your mouse. Sign up for a demo or sign up for a way for us to help you and as always, choose to be profitable because profit doesn't happen by accident.

 Profit is a Choice. Is proud to be part of the designnetwork.org where you can discover more design media reaching creative listeners. Thanks for listening and stay creative and business minded.