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• Access the full video interview with Elana Steele of Steele Appliance here

What you will learn from this episode:

• Why your first client call is already doing two jobs at once
• What to say about money, timelines, and change orders before they become problems
• The four emotional stages every client hits and how naming them changes everything

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When I had my retail shop, I used to tell the women who worked for me something that would make them look at me like I had completely lost it. I’d say, the minute someone walks in that door, we’re already six months behind.

Nothing had happened yet. No project, no contract, no first meeting. But here’s what I needed them to understand. That client standing in the doorway had not just arrived. They had been dreaming about this for months, sometimes years. They had a Pinterest board. Pages torn out of shelter magazines. They had been quietly convincing a partner that yes, this is worth doing. They had been socking money away, doing research online, looking into designers they might want to work with — including me. By the time they walked through that door, they had already done an enormous amount of work. And they were done waiting.

That’s the energy walking into your first call. And it’s the energy that makes this conversation so important to get right.

The First Call Is Doing Two Jobs at Once

Here’s what I want you to understand about that first conversation. It is not just the client deciding whether they want to hire you. It is also you deciding whether you want this project.

While they are riding that wave of excitement, finally doing this, finally taking the next step, I want you to be running an entirely different process in your head. You’re listening for fit. For budget reality. For whether this is a relationship you actually want to be in for the next several months, or possibly years. And at the exact same time, you’re already starting the work of slowing things down.

Not to dampen their excitement. Never that. But to get everything stable and lined up so the project can actually succeed, which is, ultimately, what the client wants too. So there’s this tension: their peak excitement meeting your need to evaluate and stabilize. That’s where everything begins. And the conversation doesn’t happen once. It happens in layers, at the right moments, as the project unfolds.

Getting this first conversation right is what everything else in this episode builds on.

Timelines: Why Broad Is the Right Answer Early On

The timeline question comes up fast, and I think designers sometimes feel pressure to give more precision than is actually available yet. Here’s the truth. Early on, broad is genuinely all you know.

You don’t have a detailed schedule. That level of specificity doesn’t exist until a contractor is on board and breaks down the actual sequence of work. So in the beginning, you speak in ranges. A renovation like this typically runs this many months. A new build like this typically runs that many. And I’m always honest that those are ranges, not promises.

I also explain why — permitting, material lead times, the fact that we haven’t even selected a contractor yet, let alone broken ground. Saying this out loud matters, because otherwise clients expect a level of detail you simply cannot give them yet. And that mismatch creates frustration before the project has even started.

Broad is not a failure to plan. It’s accurate information for where you are in the process. The detailed schedule conversation happens later, once the contractor has built out an actual sequence of events. Until then, give them the range and explain why.

Contingency: It’s Not a Slush Fund

I tell clients directly that the number we start with is not necessarily the number we’ll end with. Contingency is the mechanism that handles that. But here’s what most clients think contingency is: extra money sitting around, vaguely available, maybe even a little found money if it doesn’t get used.

That is not what this is.

Contingency exists first and foremost to catch the surprises that show up in demo — the things behind the wall, under the floor, that nobody could have planned for. Its primary job is to let those surprises happen and be covered without blowing up the rest of the budget.

But I also tell clients something that genuinely surprises them. Contingency can also be what lets a project upgrade midstream without sacrificing something else. Some of the best design decisions on a project happen after it’s already started. You’re standing in the space, you see something that wasn’t obvious on paper, and the contingency fund is sometimes what allows the client to say yes to that idea without robbing another room to pay for it.

Using contingency well is not a failure of planning. It can be one of the smartest things that happens over the life of a project. I also tell them early on roughly what percentage I typically recommend holding and why. So when it does get used, it feels like the plan working, not failing.

Allowances: Get Involved Before the Bids Go Out

This is even less understood than contingency, and it directly affects what your role looks like once bids come in.

An allowance is a placeholder number in a bid or contract for an item that hasn’t been specifically selected yet, plumbing fixtures, tile, lighting, cabinetry.

Here’s the part I really want you to hear.

Your involvement in setting those allowances before the bids go out determines almost everything about how smooth or how stressful that part of the project becomes later. If you pre-select items or build out a realistic, well-researched estimate for the contractor to include, you’ve set your client up for a number that actually reflects what they’re going to want.

If you don’t — if the contractor plugs in generic, often unrealistically low allowances to make the bid number look more attractive — you are then set up for a conversation down the road where your client is upset that the tile they actually want costs more than what was budgeted. And you’re the one explaining that gap.

Get involved in setting realistic allowances as early as humanly possible. Because when the truth comes to light, and it always does, you want that conversation to happen calmly, early, and on your terms. Not mid-project when everyone is already frustrated.

Communication: Name the Structure Before Anyone Assumes It

This is one of the places where designers most often assume the client understands how things will work. It needs to be said out loud.

On a smaller project where I’m running point myself, I tell clients clearly: I am their primary contact. I tell them what that actually looks like — how often they’ll hear from me, through what channel, what’s worth a text versus a call.

On a larger project where a builder’s superintendent is running the day-to-day operational machine, the structure is different. But I want to be clear about something. My role doesn’t become less important just because I’m not running every meeting. I tell clients specifically what they’ll get from me, for example, a weekly email summarizing design decisions, upcoming selections, and anything on my radar that needs their attention. Different cadence, different format, but just as intentional.

And in both cases, I tell them this: if communication ever feels like it’s breaking down — from me, from the contractor, from anyone on the project — come to me first. Not to create a triangle. But because closing that gap quickly is part of my job, whoever it technically belongs to.

Change Orders: Name the Fear Before It Has a Reason to Show Up

This might be the single most emotionally loaded term in this entire conversation. And most designers either shy away from it or underestimate how loaded it already is for the client before it ever comes up.

Here’s the reality. There is genuine fear and resentment baked into the words change order for almost every client. And it’s not their fault. Contractors across this industry have a long track record of under-communicating what change orders are, when they’re coming, how much they’ll be, and why. So by the time many clients hear that term, it already sounds like: we’re being charged more and nobody told us why.

This is exactly why I bring it up early — calmly, before there’s any reason to be defensive about it. I explain clearly what a change order actually is:

• A documented response to something unforeseen
• Not an accusation, not a markup, not someone trying to squeeze more money out of them
• A document that protects everyone, including the client, by creating a clear record of what was found, what was decided, and what it costs

I also tell them specifically what my role will be when one comes up. On some projects, I’m reviewing every change order as it’s issued. On others, the contractor issues it directly to the client. But in either case, I follow up with my own plain-language summary: here’s what we found, here’s what we decided, here’s who made the decisions, here’s what it costs, and here’s why.

That follow-up keeps the client feeling informed instead of ambushed. And by the time a change order actually arrives, it’s not a foreign, threatening document. It’s exactly the process you already told them about.

Daily Life During Construction: Say It Once, Early, Clearly

If you wait to talk about dust, noise, and disruption until it’s actually happening, you’ve missed your moment. At that point, your client is already frustrated, already living in it, and you’re trying to unwind their frustration while they’re in the middle of it. Nobody wins there.

So I cover all of it up front, framed as: here’s what to expect.

I talk about real dust — the kind that gets into drawers nowhere near the work because it’s now moving through the ventilation. I talk about noise. Which rooms will be unusable and roughly for how long. Where the kitchen will functionally live if it’s out of commission. If they have kids or pets, we talk through what that actually means day to day.

The advantage of saying this once, clearly, before it happens? When it does happen, you are never the person saying well, I told you this would happen. They already know. It’s not a correction. It’s simply life matching what they were told to expect. And I will tell you — I have had clients come to me mid-project and say, oh my god, you were totally right. It’s not something I want to be right about. But keeping that reality from them does none of us any service.

The Four Emotional Stages of Every Construction Project

Over the years, I’ve come to recognize that every construction project moves through the same four emotional stages. And I tell my clients about all four of them before we start, then touch back on them lightly at the right moments as the project unfolds.

Stage One: Excitement. 

They’re thrilled. They’ve been planning this for months or years, and they are finally doing it. Don’t tamp this down. You actually need to bottle some of this excitement to help them get through what comes next.

Stage Two: Fatigue. 

Don’t believe the clients who say that won’t happen to us or we’ve done this before. It happens to every client, every time. Whether it’s the dust, the change orders, the surprises, the money leaving their account faster than they thought — fatigue is not a sign that something has gone wrong. It is a natural progression through a project. I tell them I can’t tell them when it will hit, how long it will last, or how deeply it will affect them. But I can tell them it’s normal, and I’m there to help them through it. And if there are two people, a couple, for example, they will likely hit fatigue at different times and at different levels. All of this gets said up front.

Stage Three: Anger. 

I pray for each of you that you can avoid or minimize this one as much as humanly possible. Anger shows up when fatigue lasts too long — and it’s usually because of a breakdown in communication and trust. It doesn’t always look like shouting. Sometimes it’s just seriously grumpy, very difficult to work with, deeply frustrated. This is where staying transparent, having uncomfortable conversations early, and keeping communication consistent does its most important work. And if your contractor or architect isn’t communicating at the cadence your client needs, you step in. That’s not undermining anyone. That’s leadership. Most contractors and architects aren’t wired for the one-on-one client relationship — in my experience, they’re often relieved to hand that off.

Stage Four: Relief, Then Joy. 

Every project ends. There is no such thing as the never-ending project. But I want to be honest about what the end actually feels like, because it doesn’t start with excitement. It starts with relief. The noise stops. The money stops flowing out the door. And from that relief, the joy grows. The excitement comes back, but it comes after the exhale. I name this too, because I don’t want clients to be surprised that they aren’t instantly thrilled the moment the punch list is done. The hangover of fatigue is real. Relief first, then joy. And then they remember why they did this.

The Conversation That Builds the Trust

Here’s what I’ve watched happen again and again. I walk a client through all of this — the timeline, the money, the allowances, the communication, the change orders, the daily disruption, the four emotional stages — and they’ll smile and say, that’s not going to be us, we’re easygoing.

And then, mid-project, when they hit a wall, something shifts. I’ve watched clients pause, almost to themselves, and say: oh my god. You told me this was going to happen.

That sentence is everything. Because instead of thinking something has gone wrong, they’re thinking: Renee told me this would happen. And then they remember the second half, that I’m there to help them through it.

Walking a client through all of this is not the same as alarming them. The goal is sharing your experience, your expertise. That’s a huge part of why they hired you. Anyone can show a client a beautiful rendering. Very few people on that team will tell them with real confidence what the next four, six, twelve, eighteen months will actually look and feel like — financially, logistically, emotionally — and then be right, at exactly the right moments, all the way through.

That knowing, that explaining, that guiding, layered and paced at exactly the right time, is what creates the calm. It’s what builds the trust. And it’s what gets your clients successfully to the other side, from relief all the way back to joy.

Like this Episode?

Be sure to check out Episode #237: What Clients Don’t Understand About Their Allowances

Be sure to check out Episode #85: Four Stages of Emotions to Expect on Every Renovation Project

Be sure to check out Episode #63: Managing Fatigue and Staying Focused During a Renovation Project