ENTP as a Decorator, Interior Designer

by: Cherry

This is a really interesting question, connecting your personality type to your career choice and I can see where the potential is for frustration on your part.

First of all I am curious about what was it that made you set up the business in the first place? What is missing from your current role that made you look elsewhere to find a way of expressing it? What are the rewards of the interior design work in comparison to the office manager job? And what is the appeal of self employment too? How important is it for you to have a job where you can express your creativity?

If you won the lottery and had enough money to live on for a couple of years, what would you do? Would you leap at the chance to really take your interior design business seriously?

Try imagining for a moment that you are working full time in your design business. What is the range of demands on you in making that business run smoothly?

• • You need to get the business in – using your Extravert skills to network and publicise your service.

• • You need to come up with the ideas – using your iNtuition and creativity.

• • You need to project manage the job to completion and make sure you get paid – this would normally be more of an S & J strength so I can understand that you might find this side a challenge. Are you hiring decorators to do the work for you or are you trying to do that yourself?

Bottom line is that to be successful in running an interior design business you will need to use some skills that don’t sit comfortably with you – but this does not necessarily mean you have to abandon the idea, you just need to work toward delegating them as soon as possible.

A good rule of thumb in business is ‘Only do what only you can do’ – in other words delegate the stuff that anyone could do and retain what is your own specialist area. Your specialism is the creative side, so you would probably benefit from getting some help with the detail of project management and administration at an early stage – and the actual decorating if you are doing that too.

Who do you know who has more of the SJ eye for systems and detail who you could get some help from? You do not need to employ a member of staff at this stage – it may simply be a matter of paying a virtual assistant for 5 hours work to set up some systems for you or for doing a monthly clear up of all your admin.

I imagine that while you are trying to do two jobs at once, there really will be an element of just trying to squeeze too much into the available time, so no wonder you are feeling exhausted. You need to separate out how you feel about running your own design business from your current tiredness in order to assess its real potential for you.

by: tiffany

Wow, great ideas, and questions. Funny thing is I got out of property management [one of my favored careers] to pusue decorating. I took the job as an office manager to help with insurance costs, etc.

If I won the lotto, I would immediately open a boutique style home furnishings store, employ a staff, and own the the design circuit in my area, so while I do hate the details, the result of great design is a passsion.

I now am thinking of possibly going back into a self employed property management project, to lessen the stress. I just don’t know what to do…Your advice was excellent on delegating and not giving up.