
How much do you enjoy the business side of your church design business?
If you are like most church design professionals, you started your practice out of a personal passion. You poured your artistic and technical talents into serving your clients, word spread, and your business grew.
But one of the challenges with being an expert in a creative field is the myriad of business tasks that have nothing to do with your core talents. Chances are those are the elements of your job that drain the life out of you—a sort of kryptonite to your particular set of superpowers.
And not managing the kryptonite well can cost you.
Here are four common business practices that can hurt your business, and some advice on how to avoid them:
1-Working for free. (It happens. More than people want to admit.)
While this should seem self-evident, only people in a design practice can understand how easily working for free happens.
You have relationships with your clients, and you are wired to solve problems. (You also love solving them.)
But because churches often include many people in their decision-making processes, it’s not unusual to discover that you’ve been working with people who don’t have financial authority, after you’ve already invested time and expertise.
Add to the mix your client’s expectations that you’ll provide a certain amount of design work in advance just to be selected for a project, and you can find yourself sinking far too many unpaid hours without compensation for your expertise.
Shifting this practice:
One of the surest ways to ensure that you’re working with the people who have the financial authority to sign off on a project is to not begin work until the contract is signed. It can feel uncomfortable to hold this boundary—but it will increase your firm’s financial stability.
One of the surest ways to ensure that you’re working with the people who have the financial authority to sign off on a project is to not begin work until the contract is signed.
Of course, sometimes, you may decide it’s appropriate to give away a small amount of work for free. To ensure there is clarity about the value you are providing, a good practice is to send an invoice that details the work and zero it out. Assigning a tangible value to detailed services helps make the client aware of your investment in them.
One helpful resource here is Blair Enns’ Win Without Pitching Manifesto. While the book is aimed at creative agencies, much of the advice applies to church design practices.
2-Doing all the things. (Some keep the habits of solopreneurs way too long in their careers.)
It’s fun to be part of a startup. Working until midnight carries its own adrenaline rush, and your ego gets a boost when the red number on your phone app is in quadruple digits.(Equally ego-boosting is having double-rainbow-super-platinum airline status.)
... just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should.
As a solopreneur, it’s normal to do everything yourself—but as your business grows, that needs to change. It can be hard to let go of things you can do easily—but just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. There is an opportunity cost for everything to which you give your time. The questions are always: 1.) Could someone else do this task better? or 2.) Could someone do this task for a lower cost than I can?
Shifting this practice:
Use a time-tracking app like Toggl to track everything you do for a week. Set up categories based on the type of task (i.e., project management, design, administrative tasks, internal management, business development, marketing, design coordination). At the end of the week, look at your percentages. Is the distribution appropriate for your role in the company, or where you are in your career? (For example, for leaders, time spent on administrative tasks should be minuscule and time spent on business development should be high.) How can you outsource some responsibilities to bring yourself into more effective alignment?
How can you outsource some responsibilities to bring yourself into more effective alignment?
Letting go of things doesn’t always feel great. It can be stressful. It takes time to train someone, and at first they may not be able to do a task as well or as quickly as you can. But the investment will pay off, exponentially, as your bandwidth increases.
3-Refusing to fire bad clients. (Breakups are hard.)
Opinions vary on what makes a bad client—but you know when you have one! You feel that sinking sensation of dread when you see their name pop up your phone. Your team complains about them. And every interaction makes your job satisfaction dwindle.
Circular redesign and last-minute changes not only eat away at your fee—but also at the quality of your work and the motivation to do it.
While the profitability may look okay on paper, we rarely factor in the opportunity cost of keeping a bad client. (Opportunity cost is the difference between working with this client or using your time, energy and resources to do something else.)

Circular redesign and last-minute changes not only eat away at your fee—but also at the quality of your work and the motivation to do it. And it isn’t just you that suffers. Bad clients create burnout for your staff. When you factor in opportunity and energy cost, it becomes clear that what the bank statement says doesn’t entirely reflect the impact of a bad client on your business.
Shifting this practice:
A named partner in an architectural firm once said that his firm came extremely close to going under during the recession. In a do-or-die moment, he printed out his client list and strategically fired the bottom 10%. He confessed he was afraid to do it, but he also knew it was a necessary move. What surprised him was how quickly that move turned his firm around. It wasn’t about what was on paper—it was about how the shift in work changed the way his team saw themselves. They quit being the people who did low-end, discouraging work and felt like designers again.
4-Ignoring the Go/NoGo. (Just because you have enthusiasm for a project doesn’t mean you should take it.)
Emotion can cloud clarity for even the best designers. In their hearts, designers just want to design. This work is about passion, not profit. However, there is a very real overhead cost to acquiring talent and paying for office space, and profit allows you to be strategic in how you work. Neither a designer nor a client benefits from a team that is strapped for cash.
One of the strongest tools in your profitability toolbox is your Go/NoGo Matrix—the means by which you determine whether a project is right for your firm. Common elements of a Go/NoGo include parameters for the type of project, the timeline, the services you are asked to provide, geography, reputation of the client, their decision-making structure, and whether or not your firm has an existing relationship with them. There is a cost to pursuing new work, so it makes sense to have a strategic measurement ahead of time to determine if a new client will be a good fit.
While different firms have different metrics in their Go/NoGo, one thing designers rarely acknowledge is their propensity to “cheat the matrix” when they are emotionally attached to a project. It might be because they admire a ministry, because the work will be technically challenging, or simply because they like the person who reached out to the firm. (If you think you never do this, ask your team. They will start naming clients.)
Shifting this practice:
Ignoring the Go/NoGo Matrix is always a mistake when it comes to profitability, no matter how much you rationalize why this client or project is the exception. The Go/NoGo’s purpose is to help you evaluate potential work strategically—to protect the big picture of your firm’s work and reputation in the middle of moving from deadline to deadline. One thing is certain: when you ignore the Go/NoGo, you aren’t the only one who pays the price for it. Your client and your team also suffer from the mismatch.
Ignoring the Go/NoGo Matrix is always a mistake when it comes to profitability, no matter how much you rationalize why this client or project is the exception.
In this business, the payoff is about way more than profit. There is a very real benefit to building something which has a significant impact on people’s lives. Putting more thoughtful business practices in place will help reduce drift, allowing you to focus on creative design work and widen your capacity to do work that makes a difference.