Elite Assistance for Creative Geniuses (Danae Branson)

Well, welcome to the Creative Genius podcast, Danae. And I love referring you all the time and we do this a lot. Your company is called Elite Design Assistance. So I’d really love to know your background. How did you get started in the interior design business?

Yeah, so I actually started years ago, like in the early 2000s. And I just was self started kind of interior design. My husband was a contractor, but I kind of paid the bills in the financial industry. So it was, I don’t know, 2006, I actually started a virtual agency in the financial industry. By 2017, I wanted to get back into design and just to networking with different designers.

that I was talking about, this is how, like my day job, so to speak. They were just curious why I did not create a virtual agency for interior designers. And so I decided I could probably do that. And when I started doing it, I had no idea it would blow up as big as it did, but that became my full-time job. And I no longer was in the financial industry and I no longer was an actual interior designer. So.

I just run Elite Design Assistance and I love it. It’s super fun. I love helping interior designers, but I guess I just had a unique set of skills that kind of got me to where I am today.

Well, tell us a little bit about your firm and what kind of services you provide and what is a typical thing for someone to come to you for.

Sure. So we provide all sorts of services, basically anything that can be done virtually. So designers, we like to match them with virtual design assistants who have the experience, expertise that they need. So we do a lot of outsourcing with CAD drafting, 3D renders, admin sourcing, even senior designer position is becoming very popular right now.

Like I said, basically anything that can be done virtually, we want to be able to help the designers.

Well, absolutely. I know that I bet I’ve given you 30 referrals so far. I kind of lost count at this point, but a lot of people. And in fact, I was talking to somebody today about you. yeah.

Thank you. Yeah, I really appreciate it. And I love your clients. They are so great to work with. I love helping them. Yes.

They are.

Well, how many are on your team?

We have right around 110 right now. Wow. Yeah, so located across the US. I always tell people 99.9 % of them are US based. I have a couple over in Europe, you know, just due to either military spouse or you know some other reason they’re over there temporarily. They usually are back, but occasionally people are OK with that time difference.

We have worked with one of your graphics people that I is in Spain.

Yes, yes you have, yeah.

And she’s great. So we’ve had really good success with that. So we know because we actually use your services too.

Yep, absolutely.

Yeah, so you said that the common requests are a lot of CAD and you said a lot more senior designers. So why do you think that is the case?

You know, I don’t know, it does ebb and flow. We kind of notice, you know, throughout the year and throughout the years, it’s certain services. I think right now everyone’s just getting super busy with projects. And those are the easiest things maybe to outsource right now is let’s get this CAD drafting going. Let’s get the 3D render going. Admin, a lot of people right now are coming to us for presentations, proposals, invoicing.

And I think it’s just everyone is so busy. And for those designers in particular, I think those were the easiest things for them to outsource immediately.

Yeah, and I think one thing though that I think is a little confusing and I have talked to some of the people that I’ve referred to you and hiring a senior, they are struggling with how to do that remotely. What are some tips that you could share, especially in a key role like that?

Yes.

Right. So absolutely. we actually are creating, I wonder if I even have it up still, we are actually creating a document right now about the steps and how to outsource to a senior designer and like some of the best things to do. Like, obviously they can offer anything from the space planning CAD documentation, the FFNE sourcing specifications, all of that. But some of the things we say is, you know, you really need to have that good communication in place.

whether it’s a weekly video call or whatever that may be. But we are actually creating a document as we speak today. In fact, I was going back and forth with one of my seniors about making sure that it’s very clear so that when someone comes to us now wanting to hire a senior designer, we’re going to give them this document first so that they can look through it and know exactly how they’re going to work with the senior designer so that when they’re interviewing that person,

They can spend more time on the actual interviewing of the person and their skill set instead of asking them, how are we going to work together? But basically it’s just, you know, those video calls, staying in communication, looping your senior designer in on your processes. And then they’re going to be able just to kind of lead the way as far as how they’re going to be able to help those designers and what they can. Obviously they can do everything virtually.

But so that’s something we’re working on as we speak right now. So we should have that done fairly quickly.

Yeah, well, and especially that’s an important role and you want somebody who can hit the ground running. However, they’re not going to hit the ground in your city. Right? Because they aren’t there. So you’re have to have processes to make sure that if there are jobsite visits, somebody internally is gonna have to do that.

Yep, absolutely. Yep.

Well, what are some of the things that people should know as a firm owner about outsourcing? What are the top tips on how to have a great relationship with your VA?

Sure. The number one thing I do tell people is you do have to have some sort of organization around it. Occasionally we will get a request from somebody and they’re a little bit all over the place and I understand that because they’re overwhelmed and I get that. So we try to get them to just get a little bit more organized with the tasks they’re looking to outsource, maybe even prioritize those tasks. Because a lot of the people on our team do obviously, unless you’re hiring a senior designer, people tend to niche down.

into the area of the industry they excel in the most. So if you’re needing CAD drafting and you’re needing admin and studio designer, that could look like two separate individuals. But we also just let them know that, you know, the most important thing is to just, you know, have that idea of what it is that you’re wanting to outsource a priority and then we can help you from there.

So like we can get you started with one person if you need another person down the road for additional services. That’s how we’re helping people build their teams virtually right now. And so, you know, that’s been working out really well.

What are some of the common mistakes that you see people make that outsource?

Right. I would say again, that lack of communication, they maybe hire someone, throw everything their way, and then all of a sudden you don’t hear from them. And I’ll hear from a VDA like, I’ve emailed them three times. I haven’t heard from them in a week. I would say that’s one of the most, you know, and communication is huge. The other thing we see occasionally is I like to call kind of flipping the script.

Maybe they hired somebody for a specific thing and then as soon as they worked with them, they decided that’s not the service they wanted anymore, but expected that exact VDA to do something completely different that maybe wasn’t in their wheelhouse. Maybe it was going to take them a little bit more time and in the beginning the designer was okay with that. But then upon seeing, okay, this isn’t going to be a fit, you know.

If you’re going to hire someone for CAD, but then need them to suddenly do invoicing, you know, we, need to have a conversation with you again about somebody who’s going to be a much better fit. Most VDAs, honestly, they’re going to be honest and say, Hey, I’m, that’s not in my wheelhouse or I could do this for you, but it might take me a little bit more time. So it’s not very common, but occasionally we do see that where somebody changes their mind on what they want us outsource. And that’s totally fine.

I just want to make sure that we’re getting them the exact right fit because we want this to be cost effective for our designer clients for sure.

Yes, and it’s not, I think you’re absolutely right. If somebody is not organized and they don’t clearly communicate and they don’t have specific details, it’s virtually impossible to do that.

Yes, it is. And I also noticed certain people maybe just aren’t quite ready to let go. That’s the other thing. Like you have to be open to this process, trust the process. You have to be open to allowing somebody else to come in and help you. If you can’t do that, obviously it makes it extremely difficult. If you still just want to have your hands in it and you know.

not trust the process, then maybe you’re not quite ready to outsource. Everyone has their own comfort level with outsourcing and we just want to make sure that again, we’re doing the very best for our clients, but they have to allow us to help them. It’s that help me, help you kind of thing.

Well, and for sure, I completely understand where you’re coming from. Our company has been in business since March of 2008. We’re coming up on 18 years and we have been virtual for 17 years. So our whole company is operating as a virtual company and I can’t imagine ever going back the other way.

Same, yeah.

Well, I suppose there are times too when somebody should be thinking about hiring a permanent hire versus a virtual. So talk to me about that. What is the deciding point for that?

Right, so a lot of times designers do come to us and ask kind of the same question. So I tell them if you really need somebody who’s going to be available 40 hours a week, more like a full time employee, obviously you need to hire, you know, somebody in-house. You can hire an employee that’s remote, obviously, but you really need to maybe look at hiring an employee, somebody that you really need ongoing all the time.

Most of our clients come to us because they don’t want to have to worry about paying somebody full time. It’s not that maybe they hire somebody through me and it’s possible somebody could work 40 hours in a week, but it’s not a consistent 40 hours by any means. We offer our contracting is as needed, no minimums, but yet we are matching for long-term relationships. So if you are somebody who’s needing help,

but you don’t need full time and you’re just really wanting to make sure that you have somebody available to help you as you need them. I would say outsource to a freelancer, you know? But if you do need a dedicated person to your design studio, then definitely look at doing the in-house or the employee route for sure.

Well, I was just talking with one of my clients that has been working with you too and I told her I said, and she said, well, should I just stop the looking for the full time person? said, no, absolutely not. It could take you six to nine months. Use today’s team to fill in in between until you find that right hire. But for right now, do both because you need both things in place.

Yes, absolutely. And we do help a lot of clients with that exact same thing. And I did have a client once who ended up using somebody on my team for 18 months because it took them that long to find the right hire. And you don’t, if you have us and it’s working, then use us and take your time to spend, you know, take or spend the time, excuse me, to find the exact right person for your studio because it’s going to be huge in the long run.

I can’t agree more because hiring the wrong person is so expensive. It can cost you the cost of their salary. And it is that in terms of the lost time when you have to hire again. So it’s so important to have this flexibility. And we have V.A.s on our team too. And, you know, we use your team for the graphics piece and we have some other people we work with that are part time.

CTO is part time and he has been for gosh how many years 14 years now. Yeah, he’s in there a long time.

Yeah. So yeah, there’s a lot of scenarios where you just need somebody, you know, we’ve worked on maternity leaves, long term, like vacations, or maybe somebody’s ill and is out for an extended period of time, you know. But yeah, we’ve got a lot of different scenarios where we’ve helped people in the interim while they’re trying to, you know, still run a studio, but they don’t have everyone in house that they need at the time.

Yeah, and this is the best way to go about it, especially for small firms, because scaling, you’re not necessarily ready to hire somebody full time right at the beginning. And you might need somebody who’s doing CAD drafting or all the different softwares, maybe Revit. And those people are not needed full time, especially if you’re not, probably until you hit about a million, you probably don’t need somebody full time in that position.

Right. Yeah.

So let’s talk a little bit about ranges of some of the common hires that you might make a virtual system and some of the rates you might expect to pay.

Yeah, currently some of the rates I would say you’re going to be looking around $50 an hour for any of your admin type of services. You know, a lot of times procurement can be included in that as well. Once you get into drafting, render, sourcing, bookkeeping, project management, you’re going to be looking around $75 an hour, I would say. And then for that senior designer service, it’s closer to $95.

An hour bookkeepers, I will say bookkeepers and quick books do charge less than bookkeepers and studio designer, so that’s going to be a little bit different rate. You know you’re going to be around that 75 ish for a bookkeeper in QB, but if you’re looking for studio designer, you’re going to probably be closer to 90 for those. But keepers.

Okay, well that’s good to know. So I wanted everybody to have an idea of what to expect before they reached out to you.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right so let’s talk about I think one of the biggest challenges because if somebody hasn’t worked with someone externally like this how do you onboard a virtual assistant.

Sure. So I would say it depends on the service that you’re looking for. So it’s gonna be a little bit more tedious maybe to onboard somebody who’s doing all of your admin than maybe somebody you’re hiring to do CAD drafting. But so for admin procurement onboarding, it’s best to have a call with them, go through your process, your expectations. That’s the number one thing. I don’t know that all interior designers

Think like these freelancers have a ton of experience. They’ve worked with a lot of designers. All designers run their businesses a little bit differently. We want to make sure that we are doing exactly what you need for your business. So go through your processes with them. Get them into your, let’s say you’re hiring an admin for Studio Designer. You’re going to want to get them into your Studio Designer. You’re going to want to get them into say a sauna, whatever programs and platforms you’re using. We also tell our clients you can,

Absolutely assign them an email address if you’d like for your firm, especially if they’re going to be doing vendor communication, client communication, all that kind of good stuff. Go ahead and do that and then just kind of set up in the beginning if you want to do a weekly check in or however that looks. Again, designers run their companies so differently. Most of them come to us with the process that they’re like, hey, we already have a Monday morning 10 a.m. meeting. Can our, you know,

Admin Assistant hop in on that. Absolutely. We want you to treat them as if you would any other member of your team. If it’s a CAD drafting or more of a creative service, it might be a little bit different onboarding process. You know, still you want them, you want to go through your streamline process, but you also maybe want to show them exactly what your expectations are.

If you’re hiring somebody for those services, we are going to provide portfolios. You’re going to be able to see their work before you even talk to anybody and decide to hire them. But occasionally, maybe your firm does something a tiny bit different and you want your CAD template to look a little bit different or your renders. You know, again, we want to do what’s best for our clients. So just that communication piece and talking through that first, making sure that everyone’s on the same page.

Also, when it comes to the creative side, drafting, renders, you can absolutely ask for an estimate of time upfront. Since we’re doing an hourly rate with no minimums, we still wanna make sure it’s very cost effective for our clients. So before you even decide, yes, I want them to do this CAD project, send them the CAD project and say, hey, can you tell me how much time that’s gonna take you? Because I don’t want my clients to have surprises on their invoicing.

So we try to keep all that communication going so that, you know, I don’t have clients emailing me asking, you know, why their bill was the way it was. I just like them to click the link to pay it and we all go along our merry way.

Yeah, well, that’s the goal is always to give people at the price they want. What are what happens if somebody is not a good fit?

Yeah.

Right. So I tell people to reach out to me immediately. Like if you’re having any issues, let’s say it’s a designer who’s having an issue with the design assistant, reach out to me immediately. Even if you think you want to try to salvage the relationship or continue on, I still want to be aware of what’s going on. I want to see if there’s something I can help. You know, maybe it’s just a miscommunication. Maybe it’s again, every designer runs their firm a little bit differently. I had this happen.

last month where she had hired a CAD drafter and the CAD drafter had done something a certain way with the last 12 designers. So she assumed with this person, we’re going to do it that exact same way because this person didn’t tell her otherwise, well, this designer does things a little bit differently. So it was very minor issue. We got that worked out, but I want to know right away so that we can work it out. And if it’s just not going to be a fit,

Usually it comes down to a personality or communication style, you know, then again, I will get you somebody different. That’s a much better match for you because I don’t want you to have to, you know, continue to move on with somebody and then it gets to the point where it’s just a horrible experience for you and you, you know, no longer want to use the service when you could have come to me weeks prior and let me know that there maybe was an issue. So these things are not common, but

If they do come up, I do want to help immediately. Yeah.

Sure. Yeah, and I don’t think anybody wants to be in that situation, but sometimes people feel bad because they didn’t want to complain.

Yes, they do feel bad and they’re like, I don’t want to feel like I’m tattling. Don’t tell her I said anything. You know, it’s just, you know, they don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. And I understand that. But also at the end of the day, it’s business, you know, and you need a great return on your investment. You need exactly what you expected. And we want to provide that to all of our clients. mean, sure. Yeah.

Yeah, so I tell everyone please come to me. Feel free to come to me. you know, don’t feel bad. Let me know what’s going on. I want to take care of it.

hear you. Well, OK. Well, let’s talk about some of the things people could outsource immediately. What are some of the things that you recommend?

Yeah, so typically some of the best things that you could immediately outsource would be your drafting, your renders. Like right now we are getting a lot of people who just need immediate help. And those are two things, presentations, proposals, sourcing. People are just needing a lot of help with it. They usually, you know, when you come to me, we visit, we figure out what you need. It usually is only a day or two before we could get you someone.

My existing clients, if they need something immediately, we can usually get them something same day or like next morning. But for people who haven’t contracted with us yet, it usually takes a couple of days at least for us to get them set up. Social media is another one. That’s usually a fairly immediate, you know, you could hop right in with somebody and they could help you with your Instagram, Facebook, whatever it is that you’re needing help with.

Well, and I think another area, is really big, which I’ve been having a lot of these conversations is scheduling and administration. So, for some people who get totally overwhelmed, I’ve been referring a lot of people lately to be about virtual assisting for executive level.

Yes, yeah, we do have a lot of that. And again, it could be the scheduling. could be check my emails, draft responses. The designer will go through and see all the drafts and can just click send, send, send, you know, or weed out the junk if you’re somebody who’s starting to get more junk mail or emails, that kind of thing. But yeah, we have a lot of admin requests for sure.

Well, and there’s quite a bit. I know it’s really interesting because we use Slack a lot in our communication internally and the person does scheduling and travel for us will just be observing and paying attention to what’s going on in the other channels and she can pick up on, I think I should reach out and see if I should schedule something for that. And so she’s being proactive about making sure that she’s scheduling something for us without me having to say it. She’s just saying, hey, I’ll go ahead and set that up for you.

Yes, yeah, and that is that proactive piece. We do get requests, like we want to hire somebody who’s very proactive, who can just, you know, be a step ahead, so to speak. Again, we want to make life so much easier for designers, we want to take things off their plates, we want them to continue to grow, scale, or some people just need to take a break and get some time back, you know, from their own business.

this industry, it’s a roller coaster and the work comes and it ebbs and flows and you know, that’s why we created the service the way we did so that we could ebb and flow with our clients.

It makes so much sense to me and I can’t imagine working any other way. We only have, you know, we have what, nine or ten people on staff, but part are virtual and part are full time. So it’s smaller full time and mostly virtual. Specific people doing specific tasks and responsibility.

Yeah.

Yep. And we are, I mean, primarily virtual. That’s what we do. We offer a virtual service. Now, occasionally I do have somebody that’ll ask, do you have anyone that lives local? Cause I do need help. In a rare instance or two, have happened to have people that were local that could help or somebody that lived close enough. Cause what’s happening is some of our clients are working in one state and they’re growing their business to another state.

and maybe they’re in Colorado and also Florida, or you know what I mean? It could be not even states that are real close together and they need somebody in that other state that they don’t live in just to maybe do measuring or things they don’t want to have to fly back and forth for. So occasionally we’ve been able to help that. I envision in the future maybe even offering an additional recruiting service because I’m finding it’s great. Designers are busy.

They are busy and they need help and we want to help in every way we can possible virtually, but in the future I think it would be interesting to see how it might look to have another component to be able to help match with local as well.

Yeah, some people really need those people locally, the boots on the ground, which is one of the hardest parts of this when you’re virtual. Yeah. But I do have one firm I work with and she has all virtual people and has for 10 years. yeah, as a designer, that’s pretty forward thinking that she was. Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Yeah.

It’s not even pre COVID times. It was more difficult for people to wrap their head around the virtual, you know.

COVID made it very good for your business.

Yeah, we did. exploded during COVID. Yeah. And now people see there’s a lot of options to continue to work with virtual, you know, virtual design assistance, continuing moving forward. Yeah.

Yeah, and I think one of the things to remember is if you don’t really need a full time person and your business is cyclical or you’ve got big projects and then you have nothing and depending on what phase they’re in, the nice part is you’re not paying for the overhead of the payroll and people not being productive and people taking vacation or taking breaks and things like that. You really are paying for the work that you need to have done, which is.

very cost effective, even though it’s a higher rate than if you were to pay that person internally.

Right. Yes. Because across the year, it’s going to end up being very cost effective to hire freelance or virtual than an employee. And we do have people that come to us that are like, you know, I don’t have as many projects as I used to. I can’t continue to pay these people to sit here and do nothing. I had to let someone go. But now I’ve got a project in and I need help again. But I know it’s not going to be full time. Can you guys help me? And again, yes, this is why we created

business, we also have people that will hire because they don’t want to continue to grow their waitlist. They’re worried that they’re going to start losing some of those people. And so they hire people from us to get some of these projects going so that they can get ahead of it. And then, you know, they hope that plateaus, however that works. But a lot of times when people hire us, they continue to, to use us because their businesses will continue to grow as well.

Which again, right now you just kind of strike where the iron’s hot, you know, in this industry. If clients are coming to you and you can take them, you know, take them.

Well, I think there’s another really good point here, and that’s the opposite, which is if you are slowing down or you’re taking less business or you want to semi-retire or take a break for a while, you can always refer people to you to hire them as a virtual and have them find other employment rather than just let them go.

Right, yes. And we do have that too. Designers all the time will refer me to people that were on their teams. That, you know, that exact same thing. And occasionally I will have designers who are slowing down and wanting to kind of retire from being a designer, but still want to be in the design world and be a virtual design assistant, you know. So it just depends on where they’re at in their life.

Things change and maybe now it’s not a right fit for them to run their own design firm, but they still want to offer services to other designers. They’ll come to me and you know get work through our firm then.

Sure, absolutely. Well, we’ve covered a lot of ground today. Is there anything I forgot to ask you?

Yeah, okay.

my goodness. No, I don’t think so. Yeah, I mean, we’re just still growing and helping as many designers as we can. And we just we love it. It’s so much fun. don’t I mean, it’s interesting, you know, all the designers that went to school to become designers and then get out and think, I really love the admin side or I really love the operation side. I mean, not everyone

decided to stick with that creative side, which is great for us, because that business you need left brain, right brain people, and everyone has the experience in the design industry, they’re disabled to niche down into the areas that they love the most, you know? Yeah.

true. We are at wrap up time and wrap up time is three takeaways and I’d love to get three items that you’d like to reinforce that we talked about today.

Sure. So I would say number one, if you are looking to outsource, just take a minute. Look, assess your business, try to figure out where you need help and prioritize a list and look at those top things to get you started with outsourcing. So it’s not so overwhelming. Also consider if you’re cut out for outsourcing.

Because I, you know, I just want to make sure that you are well aware of if you’re a person who knows you need 100 % control and you don’t like to outsource things, then it might not be a fit for you. We want to help those people who want to be helped, you know, that’s the best way to go about it. And I would also say that, you know, it’s outsourcing just like when you started your business as an entrepreneur.

You just have to look at it that way, I guess. You you take risks as an entrepreneur in building a business and everything you do. Take that small risk of outsourcing and you will immediately see the best, you know, the great results and how it will help you continue to grow your business. Take back some time. You know, I see so many designers who are so busy, they almost get too busy to then outsource because they feel like they’re not.

that they’re just scattered and I don’t even know where to start. And those are a lot of them that come to me and I try to help them get organized and say, okay, I’m going to walk you through this. Don’t worry, we’ll get you on a plan, you know, because I don’t want it to be overwhelming for them either. So sometimes it’s good to think about outsourcing, maybe before you might even think you need it.

One of the things you might want to consider is doing an inventory of what you don’t like to do and what you’re not good at doing. And those things should be on a list that you should be discussing with Danae. So you can find somebody to do that.

you. Absolutely because the number one thing people find and learn about themselves is if you don’t like to do it you’re probably going to procrastinate it.

And so those are some of the best things to outsource. Absolutely.

Yeah, well, thank you so much for your time today, today. Thanks for sharing and I hope this helps all these people who are desperately needing to expand team, but they don’t need a full time person. They should be reaching out to you.

Yeah, thank you, Gail, so much. I appreciate it.

Of course.