The ROI of Delegation: How Interior Designers Can Buy Back Their Time

There comes a point in almost every growing interior design business when being good at your job becomes part of the problem.

You can design the room. You can answer the client email. You can update the procurement spreadsheet, work on the render, post to Instagram, check the invoice, and figure out why that one AutoCAD file has apparently chosen violence today.

But should you be doing all of it?

That was the question at the center of our recent Daniel House Club conversation with Danae Branson, Founder of Elite Design Assistants. Danae founded Elite Design Assistants in 2019 to connect interior designers with virtual professionals who can take creative, technical, administrative, and marketing tasks off their plates.

And her case for delegation comes down to something every design business understands: the numbers.

Your Time Has a Dollar Value

Danae shared an example of an interior designer billing $150 per hour.

If that designer spends 10 hours completing work that could be delegated, those hours have an opportunity cost. Hand those tasks to an assistant, however, and suddenly those same 10 hours can be spent on client work, business development, or other activities only the principal designer can do.

Take administrative work. In Danae's example, a designer could pay an assistant $50 per hour to handle 10 hours of admin work—a $500 expense. If the designer uses those reclaimed hours for client work at $150 per hour, that creates the capacity for another $1,500 in billable revenue.

That changes the question from “How much will it cost me to outsource this?” to “How much is it costing me to keep doing this myself?”

Much more interesting question.

What Can Interior Designers Delegate?

Quite a lot, as it turns out.

Elite Design Assistants provides support ranging from drafting and 3D rendering to procurement, client communication, administrative work, and social media. Their assistants work across industry platforms including AutoCAD, SketchUp, Revit, Chief Architect, Studio Designer, DesignFiles, and other tools commonly found inside design firms.

That means delegation doesn't necessarily require handing off major creative decisions.

Instead, Danae recommends looking for the tasks that consistently slow you down - the things you procrastinate on, don't particularly enjoy, or find yourself getting “stuck in the weeds” doing.

Those are often very good candidates for someone else's to-do list.

Delegation Isn't Only for Big Firms

One of the more useful takeaways from Danae's conversation was that outsourcing doesn't have to mean making a full-time hire.

Elite Design Assistants matches designers with support based on their particular needs, including required software skills and time zones. Designers can get help with an individual project, during a particularly busy season, or as an ongoing part of their business.

The company also handles invoicing and 1099s for its assistants, removing some of the administrative baggage that can come with bringing additional people into a business.

For designers who know they're overwhelmed but aren't quite sure what to delegate, Danae's team can also review the firm's structure and help identify opportunities for outsourcing.

Buying Back More Than Billable Hours

The financial argument for delegation is compelling, but Danae emphasized another return that's harder to fit into a spreadsheet: time.

She estimates that outsourcing can give designers back hundreds of hours each year across creative, administrative, and marketing work.

Those hours don't all have to become more billable hours, either.

They can become time for strategy. Time for finding better clients. Time for creative work. Or, wild concept, time when you're not working at all.

Ultimately, effective delegation isn't about removing yourself from your interior design business. It's about being more intentional about where you are actually needed.

Because if someone else can handle the spreadsheet, the rendering update, or this week's social posts, your time might be better spent doing the work that only you can do.

Watch our Concierge Hour with Danea Branson above for more insight!