Am I a charity and do everything for free?!

When I just got into design business, there was a client came to me and acted like he was interested in hiring me and asked me whole bunches of interior design related questions and then never heard from him again. Later on, I found out he found a contractor by himself and started to build his house based on the suggestions I gave him just few weeks back. Well, a hard lesson learned, and I have never talking about any design detail until I'm hired since. There are a lot of people out there who are trying to save money by digging as much information as they can from designers and then cutting them off the hook. Low down dirty shame.

Only in South Florida

One of the contractor's sub-contractors arranged a meeting with the clients directly behind the designer's and contractor's backs and tried to pursuede the clients changing the designs. That was a fundamental business portoco screwed-up, and that just happened to me this week.

Students or competitors?

Some people suggested designers taking some interns and mentoring some interior design major students. Personally I think it is not to my business' interests at all. Why should I train my future competitors?! Those people who suggested people hiring interns are asking designers to commit career suicide. They have no idea nowadays where those students come from. A lot of them are from privileged families who have a lot of connections. Those so called "students" can simply open their own design firms without any interior design knowledge, education background, or related working experience by using their parents' money and taking advantage of their rich parents' social connections and generating unlimited client source. Those juniors can easily out-compete any designer out there who is like me who has many years of work experiences, holding an interior designer license, NCIDQ certified, LEED certified, interior design majored in college, and extremely creative. So, mentoring those "students" is like they already can kill me with bare hands and now I'm giving them pistols. It is April 1st, but I'm no fool.

Do they really care about your interior design businesses or just another way to make your money theirs?

During the economy downturn, I got many emails from those interior designers who asked me to take their classes, seminars, and webinars and learn how to get the clients, how to market yourself, how to advertise, how to run interior design business... Yeah right! I think those designers just got no clients, no jobs, so they found other ways to make money. I admire their quick thoughts in order to survive, but deeply feel piles of bull shits. When the economy was good, they would never share those business know-hows with anyone, now the market is in deep shit, and they all come out and start to teach people these things. Well, if there is no clients out there, no matter what kind of trick you learn, how fancy your facebook, twitters, or blogs look like, how search engine friendly your web site is, you will not get any client period! Moreover, if there were so many clients out there, those interior designers would not have so much time to give out seminars or classes, they would be so freaking busy working on their projects, and if their tricks were so good, how come they don't have any project to work on and have to spend all of their time on giving out seminars?! C'mon! If you are an interior designer, do what interior designers are supposed to do which is designing spaces, stop using this tough time exploitating other interior designers and wasting their time and money because in deep inside of your heart, you know whatever you teach them will not help them getting any clients because there is none!

Interior designer license or just a piece of paper?!

Many so called interior designers out there do not have any interior design related education or credential, they are not even talented or know how to draw, but because they have connections and are business savvy, they will be able to get clients and hire someone who knows how to design and draw to work on the projects. I would like to know how the interior designer license will be able to keep that kind of people from practicing interior design and protect the real interior designers?! I am not afraid of competing with other creative interior designers because my creativity is very competitive and I am confident I will survive in this business if I compete with other interior designers on creativity, drawing skill, and project management ability, but I can't compete with someone who was born to rich and have lots of connections because those people will take most of the potential clients on the market no matter what and people like me will end up working for those fake designers and making joke-like salaries. So, I really don't care about the governor is going to de-license the interior designers because interior designer's license really has not helped me a bit.

Who is the designer and who is the sales?!

When a car was built at the factory and sold by a dealership, what do you call the person who sold the car? the sales, duh! Well, so how come an employer who does not know any interior design who can hire a person doing all of the design work but the employer still can declair him/herself as the interior designer? Well, why can't we call the employer an interior design sales, or maybe we should start to call the car dealership's sales automobile designers?!

Design Trends or Sales?

I always received the newsletters from ASID which had many articles talking about kitchen design trends or green design trends...etc, for me, they are just bunches of companies trying to sell their products. Kitchen companies sell contemporary Minimalist kitchen cabinets detect Minimalist design trend is in. Furniture companies sell traditional style furniture say the traditional style trend is coming back and on the rise. The paint companies say the certain color trends will be popular the next coming season which the paint company happens to be the only one sells those colors they claimed to be in style. C'mon! Since when the design trends are detected by the businesses?! Aren't interior designers should be the ones detect the design trends?!