How to Start and Operate Your Own Design Firm: A Guide for Interior Designers and Architects, Second Edition

This is the best book I've read on starting a design business. As an interior designer that has been working on commercial projects for the last 18 years and in the planning stages of making a transition to entrepreneur, I found this book to be a much better fit for me than most. Most interior design advice for start-ups are geared towards designers that are in residential design and do a lot of purchasing rather than commercial designers that are specifying product as part of FF&E packages. The chapters on and showing examples of proposals for design services and business plan, marketing advice are a good read. I love the chapter on Fear, Risk and Guilt. I actually read that chapter a few times because no mater how well you plan, making that jump is scaring for a lot of us that are used to relying on a pay check from our employers. He really advice's designers to become effective at running a business which is very different to being a great project manager on our projects for clients.

I was looking for a concise, affordable, easy to read book on the nuts and bolts of starting a design business. This book fits that description accurately. It covers all the important fun and not-so-fun topics of starting and running a design business from deciding whether it's right for you, how or if to have partners, hiring lawyers and accountants, marketing, fees and much more. In short, it covers so much of the mysterious and hard won knowledge that most of us weren't privy to while working for others. I'm finding this to be a very valuable resource already. Highly recommend it! It packs a lot of info into a slim volume at a low price. Lots of info bang for the buck.

I bought this book not knowing how well it was written or its content. I was surprised at how much useful information was held within. Rubeling makes this book helpful to any aspiring architect or interior designer. He walks through setting up office, costs, prices and other helpful tasks. You won't regret getting this read if you need some assistance.

I would have given it 5 stars, but even with refreshed information from 2007, the book excludes pertinent information on creating a networked environment for your computers, specifics on website marketing/design, and the potential of using free, open source software alternatives. Besides these minor exclusions, this book is a very extensive guide of practical means for starting a design firm (and growing it).The author is specifically targeting creative design professionals who'd rather follow their natural instinct to wake up late and get into their office around 10:00 am, and generally procrastinate while focused solely on design into the wee hours of the morning. Apparently this sort of stuff only makes for romanticism of the profession, while tending to limit one's success as a entrepreneur, I say, tongue in cheek.The book provides practical guidance through a series of tables that are used as templates for your own business planning, whether it is a question and answer guide for potential partners (and for yourself), or a check list of items to consider in a business plan.For the price, it packs a lot of sage advice.

This was part of a set of reference book given as a gift to someone who had completed the school but was studying to update his state cred. He currently have his state creds and is currently employed doing interior design work.