We’re less than a month away from a brand new year.

How about instead of starting a new diet or signing up for a gym membership, we all make a determined, systematic and knowledge-backed effort to transform our interior design businesses???

2024 is going to be a year of flux for our industry. Between the rise of AI, higher than “normal” interest rates and an economy that doesn’t “feel right”, change will come for interior designers.

Why not get ahead of the game and make that change work for us?

Today’s interior design business lessons come from podcast hosts Terri Taylor, Michele Williams, Michelle Lynne, LuAnn Nigara x 2, Melissa Galt, Laura Thornton, Cheryl Kees Clendenon, Liz Lapan and Renée Biery.

Guests include Val Duvick - Val Marlene Creative, Jamie Van Cuyk, the owner and lead strategist of Growing Your Team, Susan Hayward & Jillian Hayward Schaible - Susan Hayward Interiors and Bessie Seeley, founder of Kardinia Interior Design.

School’s in session. Let’s put those thinking caps on:

• Interior Design Business - Terri Taylor - Profitable Remodeling - 30 min

• Profit is a Choice - Michele Williams - Financials are the Foundation to Work Life Balance - 49 min

• Designed for the Creative Mind - Michelle Lynne - Keys to Hiring and Retaining Team Members for Your Interior Design Business - 43 min

• Window Treatments for Profit - LuAnn Nigara - What Would Lu Do?: Seven Strategies for Business Excellence in 2024: Steps 1 and 2 - 32 min

• The Affluent Creative - Melissa Galt - What Your Affluent Clients Want - 59 min

• The Business of Beautiful Spaces - Laura Thornton - Let's Talk About How to Cultivate Lasting Relationships with Contractors with the Mother Daughter Duo from Susan Hayward Interiors, Susan Hayward + Jillian Hayward Schaible - 29 min

• A Well-Designed Business - LuAnn Nigara - Bessie Seeley: Growing a Thriving Interior Design Firm From the Kitchen Table - 56 min

• Damn Good Interior Design - Cheryl Kees Clendenon and Liz Lapan - Why your clients should not hire you - 35 min

• Only Girl on the Jobsite - Renée Biery - Pricing with Confidence Starts with Knowing Your Value - 26 min

Interior Design Business - Terri Taylor - Profitable Remodeling - 30 min

In today’s episode, host Terri Taylor is talking about one of her favorite things to do: remodeling jobs. 

They might be fun, but they can easily turn into money leaks if you’re not careful, because let’s be honest, they take a lot of time to do and you still need to get paid for all that time. 

It took me a long time to figure out how to make remodeling jobs profitable, but now that I’ve got it figured out, I want to share the process with you. This episode of the Interior Design Business podcast will walk you through how to have a successful and profitable remodeling job that is enjoyable for everyone the whole way through. If that sounds like your dream, tune in!

Topics covered in this episode include:

• Why you need to see yourself as the leader of your jobs 

• Key mistakes to avoid in remodeling jobs 

• How to avoid budgeting problems with your clients 

• Creating a win-win situation for you and the contractor 

Profit is a Choice - Michele Williams - 5 Financial Mistakes Made at Year End - 14 min

In today’s episode, host Michele Williams chats with Val Duvick. Val is the owner of Val Marlene Creative. She is a Profit First coach and a business coach for those in creative industries. We're going to have so many awesome things to talk about today including Profit First, what it is like to be a creative, how to balance the energy between our left logical side and right creative side, as well as how to get to a happy, medium place where our financials are easy to look at and simple to maintain.

Topics Mentioned:

• Work life balance

• Definition of success

• For Now

Key Thoughts:

• I tell people I'm allergic to numbers because it feels so intense that my brain just does not want to understand them, but I realized I had to if I wanted to have the type of business and work-life balance that I wanted. Val Duvick

• The power of the numbers is what gives us the freedom to build the fence and to build the boundaries around our lives and our business. Michele Williams

• We need to know the minimum, and we also need to know where you're headed. Once we have that in mind, we can fill in the rest, and it makes it more attainable. Val Duvick

• I think part of success is recognizing those blessings so that we're not so always caught up on how much more we have to do and build and grow, but being thankful for how much more we already have. Michele Williams

Designed for the Creative Mind - Michelle Lynne - Keys to Hiring and Retaining Team Members for Your Interior Design Business - 43 min

In this episode, host Michelle Lynne chats with Jamie Van Cuyk, the owner and lead strategist of Growing Your Team. She helps women, small business owners become confident leaders who hire correctly every single time. It's a big promise, but Jamie backs it up and shares with us in this episode the keys to getting it right.

In their conversation Jamie shares with us the 4 things to look out for in your business to know that it is time to hire, and we chat about common pitfalls you should avoid when trying to hire in your interior design business. We also dive into what to look for in your ideal candidate, how to ask the right questions in an interview, and how critical the onboarding process is to your new hire’s success and your business success.

As a business owner, hiring is one of the most important things you will do in your business and when you don’t get it right, it can be such a source of stress and losing time, money, and energy. This is not something that you should take lightly and it will always be important to continue to hone your skills when it comes to hiring or outsourcing it.

Window Treatments for Profit - LuAnn Nigara - What Would Lu Do?: Seven Strategies for Business Excellence in 2024: Steps 1 and 2 - 32 min

In today’s episode, we have a What Would Lu Do show about planning ahead for 2024. In today's episode we'll cover the first two steps of our seven-step process to evaluate and improve different aspects of our business.

LuAnn Nigara's Ah-Ha Moments

• “To be on a path to success we have to identify what success is because make no mistake, it is different for every single one of us. Good news, you only have to figure out yours.” -LuAnn

• “We so often look only at our gaps and take a moment to acknowledge that yes, we are already doing so much right, well I just love the energy that comes from this.” -LuAnn

The Affluent Creative - Melissa Galt - What Your Affluent Clients Want - 59 min

Over the past few episodes, host Melissa Galt has been sharing a variety of ways that you can push your own brand further into the affluent realm. But have you considered what your affluent clients themselves are really looking for when they are choosing a designer to work with? Today we are delving straight into the heart of what affluent clients seek. Your ideal client wants to feel that they can trust who they are working with. I have some great tips to share that will help you achieve that balancing act of maintaining a personal style that resonates with your brand, which could entail stepping out of your comfort zone from time to time while also sometimes prioritizing self-care and authenticity.

As we venture in further, I’ll help you unlock the secrets to understanding the needs of affluent clients through the four key elements to forging successful relationships. We talk about refining your client profile, understanding the client's language, and the magic of branding. We also discuss the importance of crafting a luxurious, personalized design experience, emphasizing the power of romance in design and tips on building strong client relationships.

This journey is about you stepping into the next version of your creative business. So tune in, take notes, and transform your business into a magnet for affluent clientele.

In this episode, you will hear:

• The importance of understanding the needs and desires of affluent clients to effectively cater to them

• The role of strong client relationships and personalized experiences in attracting and retaining affluent clients

• How to use sensory language to make design selections more appealing and luxurious for clients

The Business of Beautiful Spaces - Laura Thornton - Let's Talk About How to Cultivate Lasting Relationships with Contractors with the Mother Daughter Duo from Susan Hayward Interiors, Susan Hayward + Jillian Hayward Schaible - 29 min

In 2006, Susan Hayward began her firm, Susan Hayward Interiors, with the simple philosophy that interior design should reflect the personality and lifestyle of the client, not the designer. Joined by her daughter, Jillian Hayward Schaible, the New England-based mother-daughter team strives to uncover every client’s unique tastes and personal style.

After nearly two decades of designing residential and commercial projects, Susan and Jillian approach every design with the needs of the client at the forefront. A central ethos of the firm, Susan and Jillian are dedicated to providing both form and function. As such, the firm believes that it’s not enough for a room to look good, it has to work well and function, too. In addition to their personalized approach, Susan and Jillian believe everyone deserves a beautifully designed space. A testament to their passion for creating accessible beauty, they work with different budgets and have created design service options to ensure cost isn’t a limiting factor in working with professional interior designers. Susan Hayward Interiors brings a homeowner’s dream to life with beautifully curated interior design for all.

Today, Susan and host Laura Thornton are exploring the fostering long lasting contractor relations.

A Well-Designed Business - LuAnn Nigara - Bessie Seeley: Growing a Thriving Interior Design Firm From the Kitchen Table - 56 min

Many designers start their businesses on the side, from home, or wherever we can squeeze in our work. And as they grow, most of them pivot to a studio as soon as possible. After all, that’s how you connect with clients and get taken seriously…right?

But what if I told you that where you work from doesn’t matter nearly as much as you think it does. What if I told you that you could run a thriving business right from your kitchen table? I’ve seen several business owners do just that over the years, and my guest today, Bessie Seeley, founder of Kardinia Interior Design, is the same way.

Bessie began her career at home, but even as she grew, even as she thrived, even as she hired, she remained working from her kitchen table for the first four years in her business. And as she grew her business, she did so very deliberately. She knew that she wanted to open a studio eventually. But she was strategic about the decisions she made on that path and what she prioritized first. Today, she’s sharing her insights into how she built her business with clarity and strategy.

Pick It Apart

• [2:01] Bessie shares her story of how she started, and grew, her business from her kitchen table.

• [8:47] LuAnn and Bessie discuss the strategic side of growing your business and making decisions like opening a studio or leaving your job.

• [10:23] Bessie talks about her company culture and workplace flexibility.

• [24:15] Bessie and LuAnn unpack what goes into finding and building a team that functions as a well-oiled machine (without being micromanaged).

LuAnn Nigara and Bessie Seeley's Ah-Ha Moments

• “There are so many capable designers out there, but it's not just about creating beautiful functional designs. That's a huge part of it. And that's why clients come to us—our general aesthetic that people are drawn to. But for me, it's really about that other thing, which is that I want every client to feel listened to and cared for.” -Bessie

• “That is the huge lesson of what you're talking about and how you have six women that sit around you, and everybody is just in concert together. Because you have identified what is the most important thing for you in the building of your team. And you don't deviate from it.” -LuAnn

Damn Good Interior Design - Cheryl Kees Clendenon and Liz Lapan - Why your clients should not hire you - 35 min

In today’s episode, host Cheryl Kees Clendenon is throwing a little reverse psychology at us!

Have you ever thought about throwing all the negatives on the table to reinforce positive thoughts in your client? Whoa--I know it seems a little crazy. BUT disarming people with an approach that is not expected can work beautifully, if done right, to relax your potential client with you honesty and sincerity. This helps them be able to truly listen to what you are saying and you will gain more respect from telling the truth. Being up front gives you this easy confidence and as I always like to say “Confidence is the currency to success.”

Only Girl on the Jobsite - Renée Biery - Pricing with Confidence Starts with Knowing Your Value - 26 min

In any given week, I speak with countless designs across the country and even the world. And recently, the topics seem to be coming back to marketing - which makes sense. It’s a critical part of our business. But what I’m starting to realize is that the questions aren’t revolving around marketing but an underlying anxiety and stress about the current state of their business. 

While I’ll never claim to be an expert in anxiety, I was forced into a crash course on how to manage it. And so today, I want to share with you the three steps I use to confront anxiety, what to do when you’re feeling like an imposter, how to handle the inferiority complex we experience while scrolling social media, and more!