Ep 89: Scope Creep Is Never the Client's Fault and Why That Changes Everything

Welcome back to the Design Boss Dialogue podcast, the interior design business podcast for women who are ready to build businesses that feel as good on the inside as they look on the outside.

Today's conversation is one that has caused quite a stir this week.

In fact, I think it's fair to say I've touched a nerve.

I posted a reel on social media with one very simple statement:

Scope creep is never the client's fault.

And wow... the response was huge.

Some designers thanked me for saying it.

Some felt uncomfortable hearing it.

Others completely disagreed.

But here's the thing. After 16 years in the interior design industry, mentoring over 50 women and supporting hundreds of designers through their businesses, I stand by it.

Because when we strip away the emotion, scope creep rarely starts with a difficult client.

It starts with unclear communication.

It starts with undefined boundaries.

It starts with a lack of structure.

And if we're willing to look at that honestly, it gives us something incredibly powerful back: control.

In today's episode, I'm lifting the lid on one of the biggest profitability leaks I see inside interior design businesses and sharing exactly why scope creep happens, how it quietly destroys profit, and most importantly, how to stop it before it starts.

We'll be talking about client communication strategies, boundaries, project frameworks, contracts, client experience, and why your role as a business owner is very different to your role as a designer.

Because whilst being talented will win you projects, structure is what protects them.

Inside this episode we explore:

• Why scope creep happens in almost every design business

• The three communication silences that allow scope creep to grow

• Why talented designers often experience this problem the most

• How boundaries actually improve client experience

• The importance of showing clients the roadmap before a project begins

• Creating communication structures that build trust

• Why clarity creates confidence for both you and your clients

• How to position variations and additional work professionally

• The framework I use to help designers protect profit and reduce overwhelm

The truth is, clients aren't mind readers.

They can only follow the framework you've created.

And when that framework is missing, they will naturally continue walking until they find the edge.

This episode is an invitation to stop seeing boundaries as restrictive and start seeing them as one of the most powerful tools you have as a business owner.

Because clarity isn't separate from the client experience.

Clarity IS the client experience.

If this conversation resonates with you and you're ready to create stronger structures, clearer communication and a more profitable client journey, then I would love to invite you into one of my most popular resources.

From Enquiry to Install is my complete client journey framework designed specifically for interior designers which you can purchase HERE 

Inside you'll receive the mapped-out client journey I use, 15 templated emails, communication structures, procurement guidance, trade coordination frameworks and the systems designed to help you confidently lead your clients from their first enquiry through to project completion.

Continue the conversation and connect with Lisa-Marie HERE.

Feel free to DM or tag me after listening to the episode.

And as always if you have loved this episode we would love for you to leave a review and if you screenshot this podcast and share it on your socials, tagging @Design_Boss_Diary in then we have a special gift waiting just for you.

See you in the next episode xx

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome back to the Design Boss Dialogue Podcast, the podcast for interior designers and women in business. Now, this week I have clearly touched a nerve. I've clearly touched a nerve in the world of social media because we put out a trial reel this week. And did it lift the lid on oh what I can only describe as disruptive. So we're gonna talk about it today. We're gonna dive deep and I'm gonna say something and let it land. Scope creep is never the client's fault. Mm-hmm. How do you feel when I say that? And I'm gonna let that sit for a second because I know exactly what some of you just did. You felt your shoulders go up, you thought of a name, you thought of a project, a relationship with a client that went sideways and cost you money, and you've spent a long time quietly believing that it was their fault. And this exactly was the disruption that I caused earlier on in the week. And oh, I mean, I got some amazing comments from designers, but boy, did I get a backlash! And you know what? I'm not even sorry about it because I'm here to lift the lid on things in the industry that needs spoken about, but I'm also here to support so many women and stop this from happening because I've been in the industry for the last 16 years, and I know that it's a huge problem, and more women need the education around how to deal with it. So let's dive in. Like I said, I posted this exact line on Instagram and it went everywhere. Scope creep is never the client's fault, and obviously, hundreds of you shared comments, messages, DMs. Some of them were like, Oh god, that hurt, or oh, I really actually needed to hear this. Tell me more, how do I stop it? And what it did is it told me something that I've already suspected for a long time, and this is one of the most painful, misunderstood things in our industry, in the interior design industry. So today we're gonna go deep on it. Not just surface level version that fits in a little caption, we are going to do the real version, why it happens, why it's not who you think, and exactly how to make it stop. Now, I need to start by telling on myself because I have not always known this, okay, and for years I blamed the clients too. I blamed the clients, I did not blame myself. I was the designer firing off frustrated voice notes to my team about just one more thing emails. The client who'd always asked me really, really nicely, oh, if we could quickly look at the hallway too. The hallway was never actually part of the brief, but it was always the meetings that doubled, the little revisions that stacked up into whole extra days of work that nobody was paying for. And over the years there were projects where I would watch the profit disappear, where I would be on whole houses, and the scope just completely crept and bled into lots of other things. And I actually, in the early years, didn't have the confidence or the boundaries or the structures in place because no one ever really taught me to say, actually, that's going to be a variation on the contract that actually was not in the brief, that was not signed into. And so many women fall into this pitfall as well. And the whole time, whilst this was going on, I told myself the same story that you've most probably told yourself that we're just being taken advantage of, that they don't actually respect the work that we're doing, and some clients are really just like that. And it took me an embarrassingly long time and a few painful, unprofitable projects to really realise the comfortable truth. It actually wasn't them, it was me. And every single time I traced it back, the gap started with me and my business. And here's the reframe that changed how I run my interior design studio. And I really want to share it with you because it's not about blame, it's about power. Now, people will always walk to the edge of the room. That's not a character floor on them, that's completely being human. And if you walk into a space and no one has shown you where the walls are, you keep moving until you find them. Clients do exactly the same thing in a project. If you haven't shown them where the edges of that room are, they will keep gently walking and walking. One more request, one more room, one more while we're at it, until they hit something solid. Okay. Scope creep isn't a sign of a difficult client. It's a sign of an undefined project, and it lives in the silence where a clear communication strategy was supposed to be. And in my experience, there are three silences where it almost always begins. The first is no defined trajectory of that project. The client genuinely doesn't know how the project is meant to run phase by phase. So every stage feels completely open-ended between the client and the designer. The second is nothing in writing about what's included and what'sn't. So the line between yes, that's part of it, and that's a separate piece of work, it simply doesn't exist. It's just not there, it's not in the paperwork. And the third is no agreed way for them to communicate with you. No door, no rhythm, no here's how and when we talk. So they reach for you constantly at all hours through every channel because you never told them there was a better way. Fill those three silences, and the creep has nowhere to grow. And this is why I'm so passionate about supporting women in their business to show them where are the edges in what they're working with, where are the edges of the communication strategies? Where are the edges where the clients have to stop walking before they hit something solid? And where are the edges of allowing them to understand what is included and what isn't included? Now, here's the part that I think is going to sting a little. And oh my god, I say this with so much love, like so much love because I see it in the most gifted women I work with, and anyone that is in my world, in the design boss diary family, in the community, you know, I mentor over 50 women currently, and every single woman knows that, you know, I'm a very black and white coach and mentor, but I say it with so much love because I get the fiercest results for my women. The more talented you are, the worse this tends to get. Okay. And that feels really backwards, doesn't it, when I say that. Now, you'd think that the brilliant designers would have it completely handled, but what I see is that when you're exceptional at the craft, you pour everything into that craft, the mood boards, the sourcing, the detail, the magic, and you assume because the work is so good that the work is going to speak for itself. That a brilliant result will keep absolutely everyone happy, and everything is just going to sort itself out. So the relationship, the structure, the boundaries, the communication, all the unglamorous scaffolding around the work gets left a chance. And that's the gap. Your talent isn't protecting you, it's actually distracting you from the very thing that would let your talent be profitable. And there's one thing being an amazing talented interior designer, but there's another thing which is completely different at being an interior design business owner. And this is where the lines get completely blurred when interior designers decide to start up a business or potentially are in their early years when they don't understand the foundations of business to allow their talent and their craft to really shine through. This is the same pattern I see everywhere, not just in interiors. And if you're a woman in business in lots of other multi-serviced areas, I see it exactly the same. I see clients basically asking for so much more than what was contracted on their brief because the service owner and the woman in business has not actually put a clear definement on what is and isn't included. So it does it doesn't just happen in our industry, it happens across every single industry. And the most capable woman in the room doing the most extraordinary work, undercharging and over-delivering, exhausted, because she's mistaken being good at the work for being good at running the business around the work. And those are two completely different skills, like I've said. And nobody has ever taught us the second one. So that is why I'm here to lift the lid on the gatekeeping that happens and the fact that there is not enough support out there for women, certainly within the interior design industry, to support them set up the right structures and boundaries in their businesses. Now, I want to challenge something a lot of women believe deep down that boundaries are completely cold. And I've heard this before. Oh, if I put too many boundaries in place, people are just not going to warm to it, they're not going to like it. That being clear and structured somehow makes you less warm, less generous, less of joy to work with. That if you lay down all the rules, you'll scare all the lovely clients away. And I call complete BS on that. It's the opposite. Your boundaries are the most client-serving thing that you own, and it is what helps you grow your business. Now think about it from her side. Okay, a client's experience of you doesn't start when she signs, it starts the moment that she finds you. Your page, your social media, your website, the first conversation, the way that you hold that first call. And what every good client is secretly craving is to feel safe, to feel held in the project, to feel like she's in capable hands, to not have to manage you or to guess or to worry. And when you map the journey out for her, here's how it runs. Here's what's included, here's what isn't, here's how and when to talk, here's how and when we're gonna communicate. You're not building a wall. What you're doing is you're handing her a roadmap of how the project is gonna work, and you're saying, I've done this so many times that I can see the whole road ahead, and I'm gonna walk you through it. Now that is what expertise feels like from the outside, and this is what makes her trust you more, not less. So I really want you to think about that and let that sit within where that's landing this morning. Because boundaries and clear communication and showing your client the edges are basically like showing a client the roadmap of how things are going to run. And this is why I say scope creep is never the client's fault. And okay, yes, that sounds harsh. However, if you do not have the boundaries and the structures in place in your business, what are you actually running? And the clients that come into it, how are you actually leading them? Because clarity isn't the boring admin around the experience. Clarity is the experience, the calm, the confidence, the feeling of being looked after that all comes from structure, not from the absence of it. The designers whose clients rave about them, who refer everyone they know, who happily pay the premium fees, it's almost never because the work was that much better than everyone else's. It's because the whole thing felt safe. And for a client to feel safe in a project means the absolute world in business. That is your goal dust. That is what you're looking for. So let's make this practical because I don't want you to just feel seen. I want you to actually fix it. Okay. So here's the framework I use. And the golden rule underneath all of it is you set the edges before the project starts, not after the first overstep. Okay. Boundaries you introduce mid-project feel like a punishment to the client. Boundaries you set at the start feel like professionalism. So we never ever want to go into a project and punish a client for doing something. We should never punish them anyway, but just remember it starts with you. So if you set all the boundaries and communication structure at the beginning, you are starting off on a professional foot with your clients. Now, one, I want you to map out the trajectory of what a project looks like. Before anything begins, the client should be able to see the whole journey, the phases, the order, roughly how long it's going to take and what happens at each stage. And when she can see the road, she stops trying to run ahead of you and asks 20 million questions, and then you start getting frustrated. Oh, this client's on my back already. But actually, let's flip it. Why don't you do the work to show her what's ahead of her and she won't ask so many questions? Number two, I want you to define what's in and what's out in writing. This is called a communication strategy. This is the one everyone skips and everyone regrets. Be specific. Spell out what the project includes, and just as importantly, what it doesn't, and what happens if she wants something beyond that. Not because you won't do more, but because more becomes a clear, paid, respected conversation instead of a quiet resentment. So if the client comes to you and asks for more or something to be done with out of the contract, you can put a variation contract invoice together. And when you position it, she is not surprised because she already knows it's coming. Now, three, set the communication door and the rhythm. Decide how she contacts you through which particular channel and how often she'll hear from you, and then tell her, I'll send you a written update every Friday, and the best way to reach me is here. Now, this is something that we did in our interior design business, is we would always send Friday updates. We loved getting to the end of the week, and we would basically in the mornings, after our site walk arounds with our different clients, we'd get back and after lunch, we would go through and write up all of the communication for that week and what's going to happen in the following week. So that the client always has a little update before they go into the weekend and then they know what to expect the following week. When your client knows what is coming up, she stops chasing you for it. And the rhythm replaces the anxiety of what they're going through because it's a big thing for a client to go through big major projects, especially if it's a big renovation or you know, it could be a whole ground floor. They want that communication. So allow yourself to step in and put those boundaries in place to make that happen. Now, number four, I'm gonna say it out loud warmly at the start. Don't bury this in a contract that she skims over. Walk her through it on that first call like it's a gift because it is. Communication is the biggest gift you can give in any business, not just the interior design industry, but any business. You want to sit her down and say, I want this to feel completely effortless for you. So let me show you exactly how I work, how we're gonna work together, and the roadmap of what this project looks like because I'm so excited to take you through this process. I want you to enjoy absolutely every stage, and of course, you're gonna have lots of questions, but I've mapped it all out for you so you can see the journey, and I've also put in when we're going to be in touch and how we communicate, just so you know how to get the most out of this project. That paragraph alone will set you apart from almost every single designer she's spoken to. And do those four things, and scope creep doesn't get managed, it stops being created in the first place. So this comes back to the disruptive lid that I opened um earlier on in the week in the industry of scope creep, it's the designer's fault, it's never the client's fault. Oh my god, the abuse that I got. However, I hope you're listening to this podcast and you can now see why I am so passionate about this, because it starts with you, the designer, and it starts with a reflection of your business. And if it has touched a nerve, and if you've been carrying around a story about a difficult client or a project that's drained you, or a relationship that left you feeling taken advantage of, I want to gently hand you a different story to carry instead. You are not bad at boundaries, you were just never taught that boundaries are part of a design, that the experience you create create around the work matters as much as the work itself. And the beautiful thing about the truth is that it puts the power back in your hands as the interior design business owner. And if it starts with you, then it could be fixed by you. And starting with your very next inquiry, I want you to put all of this in place. And if this is landed and you want the actual framework, I walk my designers through the one that maps out the whole client journey, the communication, and the scope from the very far first hello. Come and find me and head to the show notes because in here I have got inquiry to install. And inquiry to install is my mapped-out client journey with 15 templated emails to support you on how a project should run from the minute and a client lands down into your world until you're presenting to that client. And we also have in here a little bit about procurement and the structure around that, as well as the structure around trade coordination. So if this is something that you're really, really wanting in your business, then I want you to head to the show notes, click the link, purchase inquiry to install. Now, thank you so much for being here with me today. Go and make your edges visible in your business. And I cannot wait to see you next week for another powerful packed podcast. And as always, if you have loved today's podcast as much as I have delivering it, then I would love you to head to Apple or Spotify, whatever you're listening on, and leave a review. And if you screenshot it and share it on your social media and tag me in, then my team will be in touch to give you a special little gift. Take care.