Why This Oklahoma Designer Has The Hard Client Conversations Early

Original article posted at Business of Home by Kaitlin Peterson.

What do you wish you would have known when you first started out?
The biggest thing is that you cannot avoid a hard conversation. It’s going to happen, whether it takes you that initial day or two weeks—and it’s not going to get any better [if you wait]

Hard conversations in what context?
Any of it! If something goes wrong—or even if something was installed the way you designed it, but you don’t like the way it came out. You know, you did your best, you thought this was going to be awesome, and then it gets in and you’re like, I think I want to change this. Somebody has to handle it. And it doesn’t mean that you’re sticking it to your client and making them foot the bill; it doesn’t mean that you’re footing the bill for all of it—but any monetary consequence aside, you have to look at the design and your integrity in a situation like that and have that conversation immediately. Don’t avoid it. That’s something I wish I would have practiced more at a younger age. Another thing is I now require [both spouses] to be there [at design meetings]. I will not have a conversation with just one person.