Stop Hiring Frogs: Interior Designer's Guide to Building Your Dream Team
Hiring expert Jamie Van Cuyk reveals why most interior designers struggle to build effective teams - and how to find the right people without years of trial and error.
If you're an interior designer who has ever hired the wrong person (or been too afraid to hire at all), this podcast episode is going to change everything. Jamie Van Cuyk of Growing Your Team is here to explain why so many talented designers struggle to build reliable teams despite having amazing design skills and growing client rosters.
In this interview, Jamie reveals how she helps interior designers transform their hiring process from frustrating trial-and-error to a strategic system that attracts the right talent. She explains why you might not need the full-time employee you think you do, how to identify what support would actually have the biggest impact on your business, and why finding the right fit for your specific design firm is more important than just checking qualification boxes.
Google search data confirms it – hiring concerns are among the top business challenges for small residential interior design firms. Your design talent deserves equally skilled support, and the right hire can transform your capacity, client experience, profitability and work-life balance.
"I was listening to people say it took me eight years to get good hires for my business or I had to go through so many frogs to finally get that good hire…and I was just like, it doesn't need to be that way."
Whether you're considering your first hire or looking to build a small but mighty team, Jamie's practical insights will transform how you grow your interior design business through smart hiring.
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Chapters
0:05:28 Interior Designer Hiring Mistakes
0:07:10 A Hiring Success Story
0:13:42 Who Should We Hire First?
0:18:18 Full Time, Part Time, Outsource, Automate or Do Nothing?
0:24:00 Real Life Story
0:29:34 How Can Hiring the Right People Transform Your Business?
0:33:03 Bringing on a Junior Designer
0:36:35 How Can Interior Designers Work With Jamie?
0:42:47 VIP Program
0:44:23 Next Steps
0:47:59 Interior Designers Who Can't Delegate Are Bad For Business
0:51:19 Onboarding & Training
0:55:01 Legal Stuff
0:58:43 Onboarding Tips
1:02:48 Technology, Automation, A.I.
1:12:49 Delegation is Good
1:14:31 Outro
Read the transcript…
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Jamie, what sparked your. Your entry into this business? How. How did you become who you are today?
Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team: Yeah, so it was kind of a very long, winding journey, so I'll give you the shortened version. So when I was in corporate, I was a manager in the internal operations department for an international marketing company. And my team was a great team. A lot of my team members, more entry level, and they were always getting promoted and poached to go elsewhere in the organization. So I was always in this constant state of hiring. But it wasn't just my team. I had peer managers that were very similar.
They were always in this constant state of hiring. And the problem was they didn't really have the time to be doing the interviews and reviewing resumes. And I was like, I got it. I got the time. So I was just like, you know, tell me who you need and what you need. And at first they're like, well, we're hiring for the same position, so you know, who you need and who I need are probably the same.
Just so the next best person, if you don't take them, I'll take them. And I was like, well, that's true, but not quite so true, because you're a different manager, your management style is different. The team members that they're going to be working with are different. The sales teams that they're going to be working with are different. There's a lot of different things here.
So I got, when I was in corporate got very good at detecting the nuances of positions and where that person was going to be to help identify not only is someone good enough for the role for the general tasks, but are they good enough for that team? Are they a good fit? Honestly, I really didn't think it that much of it as a skill or everything, like while I was there in corporate, because to me, it was just a task I needed to get done.
Hiring was just a task and I learned how to do it. I learned a lot through trial and error, but I just learned how to do it. After I had my second daughter, I returned from maternity leave and a few months later said, you know what, I'm done with corporate. I've always wanted to run my own business.
I was having a hard time finding a daycare that I really trusted for my daughter. So I was just like, I'm going to quit my job and I'm going to start the business my husband and I had always talked about, which was a software development business. I lasted six months doing that and realized I hated it.
So I was like, what can I do that I'm actually going to enjoy doing? I want to run my own business, but I want to enjoy running my own business. And it took a lot of talking with people and meeting people and figuring out what their problems were and everything when I to really connect the dots for me when I realized that I wanted to do some sort of consulting where I was helping people build their leadership skills and an area where people really needed help in the small business space.
Because I live in a community that's full of small businesses, was around hiring, people really didn't know how to hire. And I was listening to people say it took me eight years to get good hires for my business or I had to go through get so many frogs to finally get that like good hire. And I was just like, it doesn't need to be that way.
So I started giving them tips. And then I realized that when it came to small, small business hiring, so we're talking about like very small businesses, like fewer than 10 employees, even fewer than five employees. No one was really talking that audience too much. Specifically when it came to hiring.
The companies out there that wanted to help small businesses with hiring, they define small businesses as 50 plus employees, which, yes, is still a small business, but it's different than an employee than a business with two employees. And so I was like, all right, I have all this knowledge.
I love educating and teaching people. People need to learn this. Let's, let's do something about it. And that's kind of where growing your team came from. And so when you. When that started, who were your.
Not. Not specifics, but what. What groups, what different kinds of businesses did you start with? Who were your first clients? So some of my first clients, I worked with a company that ran photo booths for weddings and big events, interior design companies, a law firm.
It was just a lot of different businesses in my community. And beyond that I was meeting. One of the things I noticed about a lot of the businesses that I was working with is they would. I would say they were more creative businesses. And what I mean by that is they were businesses that weren't necessarily following the rules.
It's not like even the law firm, they weren't like, this is how a typical law firm runs. They were in that process of I want to start a business that works for me and I get to make the rules. And up in my business, like, I don't have to do what everybody else was doing. So they were very much businesses that were creating their own path, following their passions.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: That's cool. Okay, so let's focus in on. On interior designers. Specifically, are there typical mistakes that you see interior designers making?
Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team: Yes. When it comes to hiring, yes. So one of the things I think that I see interior designers do a lot when it comes to hiring, especially with the very early hires, is people that start interior design. Businesses start it because they have a passion for interior design. They like that part of doing the business.
But then there's all these other things that come along with actually having to run a business. So you don't get to just be in your area of passion. You're doing, you're wearing all these other hats. So now they need help, and they need help on their client projects, and they need help on all the business administration things.
And they want to hire someone that's really just like a jack of all trades who can help here and there and everywhere within their business. And a lot of times that doesn't work because they also want someone that's really good at the interior design skills that they need. And the people that are really good at the interior design skills don't want to be doing the office administration, and they don't want to be doing those other tasks that make the business run.
So they. They struggle a lot finding the right people for their positions because they're trying to put too much or too many different skills into one position instead of just hiring. I would. What I like to call is micro position. So hiring Someone that just for what you need. And if it's not a full time job, that's fine.
Hire for the few hours for what you need and then hire a different position, maybe do the office admin stuff for a few hours for what you need instead of trying to do these jack of all trades jobs.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: So now we've looked at mistakes that designers do make across the board. Can you give me a story, perhaps a success story, of how the right hire helped transform a design business?
Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team: Yes. Yeah. So thinking back to one of my early clients in the industry, they were definitely at a point where they were overwhelmed with the client work and running the business.
They did have someone that was running all of their accounting work. They had someone that was doing some of the basic admin work, but they really needed someone to come in and really help with some of the interior design tasks. Some of the more basic, I would say not entry level, entry level, but some of more junior designer.
And one of the things that ended up happening when they brought in this person was they were to, they were able to elevate to more of that senior sought after designer that they wanted to be while still allowing their business to take on smaller projects.
So they had a client, they had clients that were loyal clients and maybe they had done a massive project in their house, but now maybe they have, you know, another property that they want a small project on. And before she would have to say, well, that really doesn't fit in because I want to be doing these big projects.
But now that she had this other team member, this more junior team member, she could give her junior team member those smaller projects, keep that person in her network. So she was continuing to get the referrals and she was continuing to get maybe those bigger projects, maybe in their, their vacation rental.
They're starting with a bathroom upgrade, but a few years they're going to redo the entire thing. So she was able to keep clients in her ecosystem there, but by bringing in other people and she didn't have to spend the time doing that. So then she was able to go and give her time and attention on those bigger projects and those bigger clients that really required her level of talent.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Interesting. How did that process work with you and that principal designer? How did that selection process go?
Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team: Yeah, so the first thing we did was really identify what does she need this person to do.
So as I mentioned, she did have some other team members on her team, but it was really figuring out what is this specific role, not how it could overlap with other roles. So we created clear responsibilities within her team. We then really looked at who is going to be successful.
So, as you know, in the interior design space, every company has their own style. Style, their own flair. The thing that makes them different, the things that they attract clients through, because they're different than somebody else. Well, you need to make sure. And she needed to make sure that the person that she was bringing in match that was able to do work that would align with her brand.
So we went through and really defined what does that mean? What does it mean to do work like she does? And when you're a smaller firm and you've been doing a lot of the client work, it's all in your head. So it's kind of like pulling that out. What does it mean to be successful? What does it mean at the end of the job for you to be able to put your stamp of approval on it?
So we really dug in a lot of that of like, what does this role look like in terms of the roles and responsibilities of the tasks, but then also what makes it unique to your company and her culture and everything. So then once we really defined kind of who that idea candidate was, but the process we went through when we created what we call the hiring strategy, so we created a job post that spoke directly to that idea candidate.
So, for example, if we're trying to hire a junior designer and there's two job posts out there, one for company A and one for company B, we want a candidate to read those and understand that they're two different jobs. And we want the candidates to look at that and say, possibly one of them.
They're like, yes, this is the job for me. And the other one being like, well, I could do the work there, but that doesn't actually sound like me. A place where I'll be happy. We wrote a job post to really speak to her idea candidate, and then we created a list of questions for the interviews. I always suggest at least two interviews and every question should tie back to that idea candidate.
We really went through and created questions to say, we're asking this question, and then telling her and giving her the tools for why are we asking this question? What are we trying to uncover? So that way it wasn't just a, ooh, that answer sounds good, but, oh, that answer actually aligns with what I'm looking for and what I need out of this person.
So we guided her through that interview process. For this one. She did the interviews on her own. We didn't do them for her. We do sometimes do full Service recruiting, where we'll do the first round interviews. But she did the interviews on her own, and then we just helped her sort through the candidates to say okay.
As we talked about before we started recording, sometimes it's your gut tells you something. So sometimes we'll play devil's advocate when it comes to that. It's like, if your gut's telling you that, prove it to me. Why is your gut telling you that and having those conversations of, okay, yes, this person really is a good fit, or no, you're right, that person's not a good fit.
We should. We should pass.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: So it's. It seems to me that there's a real education process that goes on between you and your client, the designer. Is that. Would that be accurate?
Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team: Yes, that is one of our goals is, you know, when someone works with us not only for them to get that idea a candidate and get that good person on their team, but for them to gain confidence about how to navigate the hiring process.
So a lot of times our clients, they're just very uncertain when they come to us. They've had hiring challenges in the past. They might have gone through a series of bad hires, and they're just trying to figure out what to do to get it right. So we, we educate them a lot through the process to help them understand why we're doing everything we do in the process and how they can be successful.
One of my first interior design clients, we are in a business group together, and she comes back to me all the time. I think it was about five years ago that we. We worked together. So she's hired a few team members since then, and she still says, I. Every time I have to hire, I go back to the notes that I took during our sessions.
I go back to that hiring strategy that you created, and I use that to guide me to my next hire. And it. She's like, it's worked every time. But she says it was that knowledge, it was that knowledge sharing that made her go from hiring just feeling overwhelming to hiring, feeling like it. It was. It's a breeze.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: And especially for. For small businesses. And that's interior. I mean, residential interior design across the board. Small businesses, like a ridiculous number, like 85% of residential firms have five or fewer employees. So anytime you bring somebody on, it's a massive deal. Right? It's going to change your. Your culture, like, drastically. So, okay, so if we had. And I realized that we're all special snowflakes and our design firms are all a little bit different and unique, but in terms of running a business.
So say I'm. Say I'm a solo designer. Is there a. A correct first hire to make? Like, you could say possibly, you know, hire an accountant or a bookkeeper, or do we need a lawyer?
What do we need before we even get to. Or maybe a junior designer is the first person. What do you think?
Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team: Yeah, so that's a great question. So I think in business, I'm going to go with the answer that you get the most is it depends. But I'm going to tell you a few things of what it depends on.
One is you have to think about your goals. What are you trying to achieve? There are some people that says, well, I'm trying to achieve growth. And there's other people that are saying, well, I'm just trying to achieve it so I don't have to work 70 hours a week that I can be on top of my client deadlines without stressing myself out.
So you have to think about, like, what are your goals when it comes to your business? And then because we want to think about how can hiring someone support these goals? It could be one of your goals is you need to increase your revenue. And the part of the reason your revenue is feeling behind is you're not getting your invoices out, so you're not getting paid on time and things like that.
And there's a lot of money being left on the table because things are slipping through the cracks. So depending on what your goals are is really going to help you really define who you need on your team. There's a process that I bring people through that kind of aligns with those goals, but just really helps you see what, what position you need to add.
And first, you start off just by asking yourself a bunch of questions of what are you not necessarily good at? What is always getting pushed to the bottom of your to do list, but it causes you stress because it's still there on your to do list. What is something that takes you way more time than it should because you just don't have really the skills to do it well and do it fast.
What are the things that I'm trying to think, like what else to say, but there's a whole list of questions that I'll take people through to figure out really what, what would really be beneficial to you if, if you just like, duplicated yourself or had someone highly skilled doing those tasks?
Then after we create that list, we want to prioritize. So I say go back through that list that you created and for everything on that list, I want you to ask yourself, the question is, how would it impact yourself, your business, your clients or anything if you had somebody else doing that work and someone else, someone who's highly skilled and going to do it right?
So don't get into the mindset of no one else can do it like me. We're saying this person can do it perfectly, it can do it on time, no issues. You just hand it off to someone who's going to do it. Fantastic. How would that impact your business? And how in some ways would it help you achieve that goal that you want?
So once you start creating that thing and seeing that impact, start ranking them. What's going to have the biggest impact on your business? Yourself, Your team, if you have an existing team, your clients and so forth, start to see what comes to the top, what bubbles up to the top to say this is going to have the biggest impact and that's the area where you should start to hire.
So it might be that you're recognizing that everything that bubbles to the top of that list involves billing and invoicing and keeping track of your expenses. Well, then maybe in that case you need someone doing bookkeeping, whether that is an internal team member or whether that is hiring a bookkeeping services.
Maybe the things that bubble to your top, your list, all have to do with design work, and you need that junior designer because that's what's holding you back, is you cannot produce enough or be quick enough with your projects in order to, to get this out. Or maybe it's that you're really good at 75% of the design process, but there's that 25% that holds you back and you need someone that specializes in that.
So that way you're not spending eight hours to do something that someone else can do in two hours because it's their specialty where you, you struggle through it. So you start to see what bubbles at the top of your list, and then it can help you really narrow down what that focus should be of that new team member.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, so, I mean, it seems to me that we come back to that fact that the principal designer or the culture of the business as a whole really does play a large part in who to hire, what, when to hire.
I'm also wondering the difference between certain positions. Is it totally always fine to outsource? When do you bring people in house and then also part time versus full time?
This seems like there's so many details, and I realize I'm asking a bazillion questions in one. Sorry,
Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team: yes, no, like that is great. And I was like, I'm so glad that you went there with this because one of the things that I've learned over the years that holds people back from hiring is they come from the mindset.
A lot of people is everybody wants full time employment jobs. So if I'm going to hire, I need to be able to hire, afford to hire someone for 40 hours a week. And it needs to be all the time and it needs to be an employee. And then they start calculating these costs in their mind and they're like, I can't afford that, I can't afford that.
So I guess I need to keep going myself or keep going with the team that I have. And so the one thing that I always want to say is no position needs to be full time unless your company needs someone full time in that role and can support someone full time in that role.
So part time jobs are great and there's a huge slew of talented workers that want part time jobs. I was working with an interior design client of mine and they were there, said okay, I can afford a full time worker, I want a full time worker and I want them to be highly skilled in this and that.
And I was like, well, we can try it. I was like, but the two things you want people to be skilled at and the level of skill that you need. Typically someone is specializing so they're not going to do A and B. They're going to be focused on either A or B. But we might find someone so we'll try it.
But I told her from the beginning, I was just like, we might need to split these into two part time roles. But we went through the process because like we might as well try. We really weren't getting the candidates. Once again, like candidates were either skilled at A or B. They were willing to do the other one sometimes, but they weren't really skilled at it.
And she goes, nope, this is the one I need. I need someone who's really skilled in both. We split it to two part time roles and she was able to find people almost immediately for the positions because. But her biggest fear was people need full time work. And that was what's holding her back. And I kept telling her, no, there's people out there that want part time jobs.
There's people out there that either don't need a full time job, maybe it's a parent that has been home with the kids or wants to stay home with their kids and so they're or, or taking care of an aging parent and they only have so many hours a day. Like there's a lot of people out there that life makes it so they only need or can do part time.
So I always say you're better off hiring multiple part time workers and try to shove everything into a full time job if you don't need a full time worker or once again shove everything into a full time job to create those like Jack of all trades positions that don't really work out in the long run.
So then when it comes to employee or contractor, the most positions can probably be filled by either or most tasks that you want to get done. So the biggest thing to remember is when you hire someone as a contractor, they are a business.
Even if they're a business of one, they are a business that you are hiring to do work for your business. They are not your employee, they are not a part of your organization. They are a separate business that is doing work for you. And for a lot of tasks that's okay.
You can tell them you know your brand style, you can dictate the deadlines and everything and that's okay. But there's going to be other things where you're going to want a little bit more control that you might not want to be outsourcing to another business to go show up and interact with the clients in certain, in certain things.
When you have your initial kickoff meeting with a client and you're going and doing measurements and you're talking about design stuff and you could really use a second person there, should that be a separate business or should that be someone who's representing your business, who's fully in your business?
So that's always one of the things I want to say is technically almost all work can be done by a contractor. But there are things where you're going to want that more control and you're going to want an employee versus hiring a second business. So just remember I always say a contractor is a separate business that you're hiring to do work for you.
You set the expectations, you set the deadlines, they do their work, they come back. An employee is then someone who is a part of your organization. So you have a little bit more control of the process. Typically, if you want someone to be in office with you, you're most likely going to be on the employee side versus the contractor side.
So it just depends on what level of control you want and how you want want to work. There will be times where it doesn't make sense for you to have an employee because you need someone that's Highly specialized in something, but you only need that work done maybe once a month or once every other month.
So if you hire an employee, how are you going to keep them busy in between those tasks and do those tasks that you'd keep them busy in between with, align with really what they want to be doing. So things like that, where it's one off type things, a contractor might be best because then you can get that high level skill that you need when you need it and not have to worry about keeping them busy the rest of the time.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: The, the topic you brought up of a designer going to a site meeting and wanting someone there either to bounce ideas off or even just to take notes. I was at an interior design event last night and was speaking with two designers and one of them brought up that exact point.
She said she's been trying to hire somebody to look after the back of the house kind of stuff and that the person she had and she. The person's worked with her for four years now.
But during COVID when they went virtual, right, she was able to do all of those back of the house kind of things and that was fine. But she wanted to expand the role and have this person come with her on site meetings to take notes, to take pictures, to take measurements.
And the employee said, well, I don't want to do that. I really like working from home. And there was no give there. And she's like, but this is what I need. And it's so. I mean, I said, light bulb went off in my head. And I said, okay, well, I'll tell you what I'm doing tomorrow.
And I said, I'm interviewing you tomorrow. And I said, it'll be out in like a month time or something like that. But I said, you're gonna have to listen to this because I bet Jamie's going to have an answer. And you brought the whole thing up. So, yeah, if you were, if you were to speak to that designer, what would you suggest?
And feel free to ask me questions. Hopefully I can stand in for her.
Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team: Yes. So the first thing I will say is remember that your business is a business. I love working with businesses that are people focused, that really care about their team members, that are going to pay well and really say, we want to take care of our team members.
But sometimes that being people focused prevents us from our business being a business. And if your business changed, which a business five years ago at the height of COVID and now probably look completely different. You know, there are things that change.
Yes. Five years ago, that entire Role could be done remotely of what they were doing. The position that is needed right now cannot be done 100% remotely. She needs someone to go and do this work. So it's to look at and say, what position do I need now?
And then will my team members be able to fill those positions? If my team members cannot or refuse to fill the positions that I need now for my business, then I need to part way with that team member and get the team member that I need. Sometimes when we go and look at that, we might say, okay, I need this and this.
This person's really great at back of the house. I'm going to keep them back at the house and I'm going to hire someone else to go do those site visits because I have enough work there. And once again I can do small, do two part time roles like doing that or whatever they are and it's fine. But sometimes when you start to do that, you really split things in ways that they shouldn't be split.
And I'll even give an example for, for myself. My first assistant that I hired, she was working for me 10 hours a week. And then I realized she worked for me for a few months and she was great. But my business was growing and I needed someone to give me more.
I needed 20 hours a week in adding responsibilities that were just kind of like the next step up from what she was doing. And it, she had the skills and everything to do it. But once again, she was only working for me 10 hours a week before. And I came to her and I said, hey, I love the work that you're doing.
I need this additional help. Are you willing to go to 20 hours a week and take on these additional responsibilities? And she said no, but I love the work that she was doing. So I started saying, okay, that's, that's no big deal because it wasn't like I was asking her to do more of the work she was doing.
I was asking her to do additional work on top of it. So I first, I was just like, I'm just going to hire someone else for another 10 hours a week and split these responsibilities so she can keep what she's been doing and the new person will do these other things that I need to delegate. As I was going and creating that position, I was also thinking about, well, what are handoffs going to look like inside my organization?
How is this really going to fit? Like. And I started realizing that I was causing more problems for myself by hiring another person versus saying no, I need one person for 20 hours a week that's going to do all this stuff. And so I had to go back to that team member and say, this is what my business needs.
If you're not willing to step into this role and adjust with the business, then we're going to have part ways. Which ended up working out perfectly fine because that team member came back to me at the same time she was working a full time job as well. Her full time job was in the industry that really slowed down and everything during COVID So she was bored a lot and she ended up getting a new position where she's like, I'm not going to have all the extra time to even do a 10 hour a week job.
So she's like, I'm. She goes, so I'm going to have to leave. So it ended up working out really well that I didn't have to fire her. It was kind of that mutual decision as she was moving on, as I needed to move on from her. But I realized that I was actually doing a disservice for my business by trying to keep a team member that was no longer fitting with my business.
So sometimes we do need to let go of good team members because our business no longer has a place for them.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, that leads perfectly into my next question. I don't know how we're doing this, but that idea of doing a disservice to your business or doing a service to your business.
How does hiring the right people, creating the right team, impact the satisfaction of your. Of a designer's clients, which will then mushroom into making the business bigger and better.
Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team: Yes. So I would say the first thing when it comes to, there's two things I'll touch here.
So the first one is the satisfaction of your clients. You can serve more clients, plain and simple. You have a bigger team, you have people helping you behind the scenes or helping you with your clients directly. You can take on more work as a business. Your capacity increases.
And one of the reasons why this really impacts your clients positively is you don't have to tell them, no, you don't have to tell them, yes, I would love to take on that project, but we can't start for four weeks when they're like, oh my gosh, I'm so excited about this project. I want to start today.
It's always one of those things I say in businesses is there's a lot of businesses that a wait list works for that business when it comes to exclusivity. And it's a great marketing tool. But then there's a lot of businesses where wait lists work against businesses because it just means you're delaying getting the revenue that your business actually needs right now, now.
So by hiring, you can take on more of those projects, which keeps your clients happy, which means that they're going to continue to come to you versus saying, all right, well, no, based on my timeline, I would really like to start this project sooner than later because I have this thing that's happening at my house.
So if you can't do it by then, have the project finished by then, I'm going to have to go with someone else. So you're able to grow your business that way and keep your clients happy by being able to say yes more often and saying yes. I mean, when it's appropriate, not being like the people that's like, I'm going to say yes and then be drowning in the background.
The other thing is the customer satisfaction when it comes to customer service levels. As you become overwhelmed, your customer service levels just naturally go down. You're not able to respond to emails or phone calls as quickly.
You're not able to schedule site visits or get they're out as quickly because your time's being split in a million different directions. And it wasn't before because before you had less work on your plate. When customers start to feel that you don't care about them, they're not going to continue, they're not going to come back for that next project.
They're not going to refer you. If there is a way where they feel like they can get out of the project that they're doing with you, they might even do that because they might say, wow, how am I supposed to trust anything that you're doing when you're not even able to respond to my emails in a timely manner or that I have to follow up three times to get the thing that you promised that you would deliver me last Tuesday?
So your customer service levels start to go down when you're overworked. So getting more team members and having the right people on your team allows you to keep those customer service levels high. You can have people that can respond to clients or people that are taking work off your plate so you can respond to clients.
You can stay on top of your deliverables and making sure that you're getting things out. You can make your clients feel like they are the only clients that you're focused on, even if you have 10 projects going on at once.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, so I'm sure most residential design businesses are headed by a principal designer and most of them, they are the name of the firm.
Right. So, and so design, whatever. And when client signs on with you, especially if the, if the principal designer has sat down with them at these opening meetings and, and they want to work with that designer, but there's going to be jobs within the business that that designer is not handling anymore.
Whether it's back of the house for sure, but front of the house. So when you bring in a junior designer, I'm wondering, especially for small firms, how those first steps in communicating with their clients, the homeowners, and to make sure that the client understands that they're not being handed off from them, the principal, to this junior designer and they're not getting what they're paying for.
That has to be a little bit tricky, right?
Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team: Yeah. So one of the ways that I suggest dealing with that is just really kind of being clear from upfront. So maybe in your process right now you are still handling all the kind of intake, initial meetings like going to talk about what a project should be.
And most I know designers, they have, you're not going to have a client meeting, that first client meeting with a completely blank slate. Normally you have some sort of intake form or something that's been filled out. So you have a kind of a rough understanding of is this a kitchen, is this a bathroom, is it just going in, you know, selecting all furniture for, you know, depending on what your business is and what your design is, is.
But you have like some sort of understanding of what level of project this is from the start before you really have that first in depth conversation with a client. So if it's a project where you know that you're going to be handing it off to another team member, that you're not going to be the lead, but you're still the face of the business.
So the people assume to be talking to you. Make sure that junior team member is a part of any meeting that you have from the start and to communicate up front. So for example, I have a client, they do kitchen and baths, but if it's a small powder room, the principal designer doesn't work directly on that project.
She's still overseeing it from that high level and providing the guidance. But she has another team member that is leading that project. So from the very beginning, one of the things I trained her to do was you bring that junior designer in from the initial meeting, you introduce that junior designer. This is Sally, she leads our bathroom design.
So she is going to be your main point of contact for this project. I am still available for the high level questions, Sally will come to me when is needed. I'll check in on the project every now and then. But Sally is your main point of contact. And in that first initial meeting, you're both there. And you also need to let Sally lead some things during that first initial meeting.
So not just having her be a fly on the wall listening, but so that way, when that corner client is there with you as the principal designer, they're getting to know like, and trust Sally. As that transition is going on. The last thing you want to do is be that main point of contact, that main person for all those meetings.
And then being like, just kidding, Sally's going to come in and do the project. I'm off. Don't talk to me. But when you bring Sally in from the very beginning and make it clear that she's leading this project, it makes things go a lot smoother.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, that's great. So we're coming back to that kind of that education piece of what you do for your clients. Yep. Right. Okay. So let's, let's discuss. I know after, after diving deep into your website and what you do for designers, you have several different ways that an interior designer can work with you.
From like, do it yourself templates all the way to like, full service. You guys doing everything. Can you kind of give me a rundown of that?
Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team: Yeah. So we have some do it yourself templates. We have a job post template currently and we have email templates. So if you're ever like, I have no idea what to say to a candidate during this time.
We have email templates that you can use to speed up the communication and know what to say every time. So those are some of our do it yourself things. Then we have what we call our consulting type services. And there's different things that we have here. First is, so we have the one from like, if you're a person who wants to do the hiring yourself, knows what to do, but just doesn't like to do the writings, you're like, I don't know how to write a job post.
I don't want to spend my time drafting interview questions and figuring out what to ask. We'll write your job post and your interview guides for you. So that way you have all the tools that you need so you can execute the hiring process. If you're at the point where you're saying, I need to learn how to hire, then we do consulting where we'll create everything for you.
You lead the process, but we're there guiding you. Step by step through the process. So we're teaching you how to review resumes, we're teaching you how to identify who is right and move on to that interview. We're teaching you how to conduct those interviews.
We're teaching you things even like how to get out an interview early if you really determine that this candidate is not a good fit. We're helping you make your decisions. We are then teaching you how to put together an onboarding and training plan so this person can actually become that great team member that you hope them to be.
And we're really guiding you every step of the way and answering all your questions. Our goal with that consulting package is for a client to only ever go through it once because then they know how to hire and they know how to do it well. They might come back to us in the future and say, hey Jamie, can you and your team write our job post and interview guides for this new position?
But then from there they know what to do and they know how to hire because they really took that time to learn during that consulting package. And then our top tier packages are full service recruiting. So we at Growing youg Team will take over the bulk of the hiring process after we write the job posts and interview guides.
We post the job. We review all resumes that come in. We advertise the job if and where needed. We complete all first round interviews. We help coordinate all future conversations and interviews so you only have to show up for your interview. We handle all the they said the candidate communication.
And once again, we help you write your onboarding and training plan so that way you're ready to go. The only thing, the only communication we really don't do with a candidate during that process is actually present the offer letter. Only because the candidate's not going to be working for growing your team. They're going to be working for your design company. So we feel like it's important for you to make the offer, but we'll guide you and teach you so you know exactly how to write that offer, how to present it to a candidate, how to handle negotiations and everything so you can be confident.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, let's say I'm a design firm who I, I work, want to hire, I or I need help. I want to grow the team and I like what I heard from you on this amazing podcast and but I can't decide between that, your micro hiring program and the full service.
Now obviously one is going to cost more than the other. One is also going to do for me more than the other. Can you give Me an idea, maybe a prototype of what designer is a best fit for each program. Does that make sense?
Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team: Yes. Yes. So you mentioned our micro consulting as well. So as I mentioned, we do consulting, so we're teaching you through the process. Our micro consulting is the kind of a mini version of that. So for people that are like, you know, I can't afford full one on one consulting. It's an opportunity where you can get some access to, to me, some office hours and everything to still get some support as you go through the process, but to just kind of, I'll, you know, explain who's right for each thing.
So we talked about the basic level of we'll write your job posts and interview guides and then you take them to go do the hiring process. That is really for the person who knows and understands what it takes to go through the hiring process.
You understand the hiring process, you're just not good at the writing of a job post. You don't know how to get those words out of your own head to describe what you're looking for in a way that someone's going to connect to it outside your organization, which is common because sometimes we are too close to our business in order to be able to really explain it externally to a candidate.
So if you know how to do the things, you just need the tools to do it, that you can come to us for the writing the job post and interview guides, the consulting, whether it's our full service consulting program or our, what we call our VIP consulting or our micro consulting, that is for the person who really wants to learn.
You're saying I don't understand the hiring process. I want to learn so I can do it better. And so you want to be hands on in the process. Hiring does take time. So you also have to be willing and able to dedicate the time to hiring. And that's the biggest distinction, I would say, between that and our full service recruiting.
Our full service recruiting is typically for the business that says, I don't have time to be doing this. I recognize that I am the person that's holding me back. I don't have time to dedicate to reviewing resumes because I need to be on top of my client work.
I don't have time to be conducting interviews, all the first round interviews because I have too much client work on my plate. So the full service recruiting is really for the business that is lacking the time that they know that they need the hire, but they don't have time to actually do the hiring steps.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, I can See the benefits of both. I mean, the education piece in your. The VIP type program seems like, kind of unique. I've looked at a bunch of different hiring companies that will help, and most of them seem to me to be more like glorified job postings.
Yeah. Services. And yeah, I think there's a ton of value in the, in the education. But I mean, like you said, the full service, it's like, I don't have the time for this. I could learn this. You. I could learn this from you, Jamie, but I really just don't want to. And it's easy for me to, to pay for that.
Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team: One of my clients recently who is in the accounting space, they were introducing me to one of their clients that potentially needed hiring help. And that's actually one of the things they said was the reason why they liked working with me and were recommending me to their other client was because they felt like they walked away with something tangible.
So it wasn't just, we're hiring for this position, we're going to do the work for you. You get a new hire and then you're done. It was like, not only did we do the work for them and we helped them get that really great hire, they then had the tools, even tangible tools like the job posts and interview guides that they could then use in their business for as long as they wanted.
You know, that we hand over the stuff that we create for them so that way they can use it and they're gaining all this knowledge. So it's not just they're getting a new hire. It's that they're getting something that's going to impact every hire in the future in their business.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, so say I'm an interior designer. And I said, this is exact. This, this program is exactly what I want. It's, it's. I don't want you to take over everything for me, but I realize the do it yourself version is not going to work. I'm going to ruin that. So what would the process be like? I get on the phone, I call you and say, help me, help me, Jamie.
And then what's the next month or two months or whatever? What does that look like?
Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team: Yeah. So the beginning moves pretty quickly. So once you're ready to move forward, we'll schedule what we call the hiring kickoff call. During this call, I'll ask a series of questions to really uncover things about your business and things about this position.
So as we talked about before, it's not just so much what is. What is this person going to do day to day. But also, how is this person going to fit into your organization? Kind of, who are you as a leader? What is your management style? So we can really understand who it's going to take to be successful doing these tasks inside your organization.
And if you're still at that point where you're like, I know I need help, but I'm not really sure what help I need yet, we'll help you figure that out as a part of that call or in addition to that call, to really narrow down. This is the help that you need inside your organization. Once that hiring kickoff call is complete, a week after that call, you'll receive what we call the hiring strategy.
So that's where myself and my team take that week to put together the job post. We put together the interview guide. So that's list of questions that you're going to use in the first round interview and the second round interview. And we'll put together sometimes what we call the.
The advertising plans will tell you, hey, here's where you should be posting this job. We'll do the research for you to say, all right, you're hiring for this position. This is also the city that you're in. Here's some places that you should consider posting. Because not all jobs in the interior design space are the same.
It could be that you're in a different city, so a niche job board is going to work really well for you, where someone else hiring for that same position in a different city, that niche job board is not going to work for them. Or it could be that even though you have an interior design company, the position you're hiring for doesn't quite make sense to be in that interior design niche job board.
So we'll tell you where to post, free places, paid to play places, and everything to find the person that you're looking for. So that is the person for that job. So all those advertising plans, as we call them, are different from position to position, because it really matters on who you're trying to hire and what position you're trying to fill.
So we provide all that information to you, like I said, a week after our hiring kickoff call, and then you're. Then you're good to go. So then we will help ensure that you're posting your job. We'll help ensure that you are going through the process of actually reviewing the resumes, and we'll have calls throughout the process to make sure and hold you accountable, make sure you're doing the work and hold you accountable as you're Going through everything.
The time it takes to hire will always depends when you're doing it yourself. Like I said, the biggest factor is how much time you have to dedicate. So it might be that you review resumes this week, you hold first round interviews for the next two weeks, you then do final round interviews the week after that, and you make your decision within four weeks.
It could be that you need more time, it could be that you need less time. We've had clients that, from when they post the job to when they're completing their final round interviews, it's a total of two weeks. Where other ones, it could be six weeks. So our biggest thing is just to keep you going through the process and making sure that you're actually making time to do the work that you're supposed to be doing.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: I know that as. As a residential firm grows, the principal designer is supposed to let go of certain tasks, but it's hard. I mean, I've run businesses where, you know, for a year or so, I was it.
I was the all the business. I did every little thing. And I found there were certain tasks that when I needed to bring somebody in that I didn't want to let go. That. And I thought maybe it was because I thought I could do it better than everybody else. I'm wondering if that is something you see with designers that they kind of get in their own way and if there's other mistakes that the designers are making along the way that are messing up their plans for hiring and growing the business.
Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team: Yes. Okay, I think you bring up a great point. So with it is we all have this fear of delegating in our own business. It comes out in different ways. But the truth is, we built this business and it is our baby. We understand what it means when someone makes a mistake.
You know, our employee makes a mistake and it costs the company $400. Okay. Most places you can't dock their pay. You can't do anything. Like, you know, if it's just a little, little mistake in a huge project, okay, no big deal. But you know that money has to come from somewhere.
Where's that going to come from? And all these things. If you, if you're paying someone, does that mean your pay changes or all these things? So it's like your. This is your baby. This is your name out there. Especially as we talked about, the principal designer is typically the name of the company. Like, it is your.
It is your company. You are the face and is scary to hand that over to someone else. And so typically, that Means we resist delegating what we should. I have noticed in a lot of businesses, and I just talked about this recently at a conference, is sometimes we're really good at letting go of the, the back ends work.
We're really good at letting go of the things. Maybe our clients don't see the work getting done, they don't know who's doing it, but when it comes to the client facing work, we resist. And when it comes to delegating decisions, we resist. So we end up being involved in everything.
So as we talked about maybe of a junior designer that's leading a project, but are they really leading that project or are you still leading that project? Just the client doesn't know you're leading that project because you don't trust that junior designer to make any decisions. So it is normal to fear delegating.
And it does hold you back because if you're involved in everything, you can't continue to grow your business. And that's why I just really encourage business owners to look at, as we talked about that process of figuring out what to delegate and look at as like, if I want to achieve these goals, what do I need to delegate in my business?
So I do get out of my own way. If, you know, looking at it as if someone else who is just as qualified as me or more qualified was doing these tasks, what would that do for my business? And as you realize what you need to delegate, then you can start getting out of your own way and trust that you can find the right person and the right people can do the job effectively and just really learn to let go.
This ties back to like one of the other mistakes that I see, which then I think makes people stop and be scared because they might have had things go wrong before. And this is what it comes what I always call the forgotten part of hiring, which is your onboarding and training, I consider a part of the hiring process.
Because if you don't have good onboarding and training, you're just going to have to repeat hiring all over again. There's so many times where we expect someone to come in and be perfect on day one. Never going to happen. We have to onboard and train our team members. We have to have a process set up to get them to go from day one hire to an amazing employee.
And a lot of times I'll hear, but I'm hiring an expert. So if I'm hiring an expert, why, why do I have to put in so much time and effort for training? And the thing is, they've done those roles and responsibilities, but never for you.
So you have different processes, you have different expectations, you have different things that are going to make you happy than their old boss. So you need to train them how to use their skills inside your organization. And sometimes we need to train people on things that we knew that they didn't have those skills when we hired them, and we were willing to train them on those skills in order to get everything else that they had to offer.
But if we're. If we made that decision, we're willing to train them when we hired them, that we need to actually train them right. So you need to have good onboarding and training plans. And too often I see businesses say, this person's not working out. We're just parting ways.
And I'll have to say, but did you train them? What do you mean they're not working out? And they're like, well, they didn't get it. And I was like, but they've been with your organization for a week. What do you mean they don't got it. Got it yet? So it's helping to understand that training takes time. And training also sometimes means repeating yourself.
It's one of those things. It's like, no one's perfect the first time. I look at it as training as like teaching a kid to ride a bike. You know, first the training wheels are going to be on, then the training wheels are going to come off. Then the. But you're not going to just let the bike go. When you take the training wheels off, you're still going to be holding the bike for your kid, and then you're going to be letting go, but you're still running alongside them.
So if they start to wobble, you can catch them. And then finally you let them go by themselves, and you don't have to run after them because they got it. And so training is the same. You need to start with the training wheels and then work their way up to them. Being able to go and do it without you, or do you find designers are supporting surprised by that?
That, like, this is. They're like, what I have to do that. Like, I think they're surprised because it. Just face it, when we go to hire, it's because we're really typically lacking time in our business. Occasionally we're hiring because we're like, okay, I really don't have the knowledge to do this.
I need to bring in an expert. But typically we're hiring because we lack time. And if we already lack time, where are we going to find the Time to train someone. Correct. So it's not so much of a surprise of do I have to do that? Sometimes it's the overwhelming feeling of having to do it.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: So we come back to that education piece where you passing that, that knowledge, that awareness to the designer at least now makes them aware of, of what their role in this and what their responsibilities. If they want this employee to turn out to be somebody who can work for them and be successful for their business, that you're going to have to find that time and.
Yep. And, and hopefully, I mean, if, if Jamie is willing to impart some wisdom to, to help us make that process better, you know, that's all the, all the better for us. Yeah. Because there are, there are scary things about hiring an employee.
Right. I mean, we talked about outsourcing versus bringing somebody in when I outsource my bookkeeping or obviously, I mean, you know, if there's legal stuff that needs done, you know, you don't bring a lawyer, you don't hire a lawyer into your interior design firm, you outsource it.
And, and there's pros and cons to that. But when you bring an employee in, there's, there's legal ramifications to that. You know, if you decide, I'm done with this person and just want to fire them, it's not as easy as saying you're fired, out the door, close the door and it's done.
Are there things designers can do to protect themselves legally during this hiring process? Or is that, or am I making a mountain out of a molehill?
Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team: No, I definitely think there's some things that you can do is like first off, if you have never been educated on the do's and don'ts of hiring, of interviewing, educate yourself.
There's a lot of things that you can't ask in the hiring process. And I would say the simplest way to think about it is, is you're not allowed to ask them anything about their personal life. If it's not about work, don't ask it because it kind of puts you at a spot where you could uncover information that is in a protected category.
So it's one of those things where someone in the interview can bring up that they have kids, don't ask a follow up question about their kids. And I know sometimes it's so hard because we just want to be personable, but sometimes we just have to say okay and move on type thing. So protect yourself in interviewing by making sure your interviews are all about business.
It doesn't really matter what they do outside of work. It matters who they're going to be when they show up for you. So that's like one thing to do. The other thing is just documents. Like once that person's coming on your team and you don't feel that they are learning in the speed that you need them to learn, you start to feel that, that maybe they're not comfortable or capable of doing what you need them to do.
Communicate to the team members and then document things. So you want to document that you had conversations and making sure that you're providing that documentation that follow up to the team member as well. So it's like we sat down today, we had a conversation about how you are, that you need some extra training on XYZ and that you're not up to where you need to be yet with xyz.
So you want to make sure that's in writing so that way they can't come back and say that conversation never happened. You want to make sure that you're being very clear of this is needed, this skill is needed. So if you're not able to meet the expectations here, we will have to part ways and just some of those things where you kind of have those conversations ahead of time if it does.
And once again, like I will just say put this out there like I am not a lawyer. So always talk to your employment lawyer or an HR consultant that really specializes in terminations and stuff to figure out exactly how to handle your situation. But from what I was always taught, if you do have to let someone go when it comes to that termination conversation, say as little as possible.
So don't say that you're letting them go due to perfect poor performance. They should probably know that because you've been having conversations along the way about their performance. But just let them know that their services are no longer needed and keep everything else out of it because anything that you bring up can be brought up in a court case against you.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Yeah. All right. Well, that was the unpleasant part of the discussion. But I guess it needed to have to happen. We talked…
Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team: I know you were asking about onboarding and kind of some tips of like making onboarding easier. So I can give some quick tips. There is. Because that is like it is so overwhelming. If you are already lacking time and let's say you are bringing on a full time person, you don't have 40 hours the first week to sit with someone.
Even if you're bringing in someone 10 hours, you probably don't have 10 hours to sit with someone that first week. You probably don't have 10 hours or 40 hours to sit with them the second week. So what do you do and how do you get this person up to speed? So when we go and create onboarding plans for our clients, we really focus on training and doing.
So we'll say training can't happen all at once because you don't have time to sit down and just train them. People also don't absorb enough information for you to sit down and just train and train and train for hours. You're going to have to retrain because they're not going to get everything.
So what we say is you train them on like part A of their job where then they can do something from learning part A of their job. One of the things that I have had a lot of clients do in the interior design space is one of two things for those very first days is one, teach them how to access project files.
Then give them an assignment to go and look at past projects. What have you done? What are the projects? Can, if you have something where all your communication with clients and stuff is in a system where they can easily see the flow of projects and things like that, just have them start going through your project files.
They can really see what work you have done. They can go and do something similar with your current projects. Just go and get familiar with them. Even if they're projects that they'll never touch because you're not going to bring them in on those projects, but they're your current projects still, they can get a feel for your organization.
If you've been published, part of their first week assignment should be to go and look at where you've been published, read the articles, listen to podcasts, if you've been on podcasts and things like that. So that way they can get that feel of who you are, what is your brand. But then we're going to train them on part B.
What is part B of their job? Now they can do assignments around part B and it might be that their, their job spans this entire process, but you're going to train them on one part of that process and they're going to do that process. And then you're going to train them on the next part of the process and they're going to do those first two parts of the process for everything that's going to happen and things like that.
How can they get their hands dirty on what you're teaching them? So that way they can be doing stuff while you're going off and doing other work. They're not necessarily doing work at first that's going to go to the clients or they're just going to send out on their own, but they can self serve with their learning or they can start practicing what you're teaching them and producing something of value while you're doing what you need to be doing.
And then you come back and you teach them a little more. So I kind of view it as this like stair step approach to training. So you're just training a little by little and then they're starting to do more and more until you're able to train them on their full job. And it really takes the pressure off of you because you don't have to be training them on everything at first, but you're still getting something of value out of them.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: And that obviously is something that you've put thought into. And not that it's a new concept to me, but I can see somebody, when you go to hire that employee to have this prepared in advance.
Right. So we're going to bring somebody in in the next month or so. What are we going to do to ease that transition to make it as, as efficient and fruitful for, for everyone involved. Right. For the business, for the, for the existing employees and for the new employees.
So, so that is something that, that you would advise or consult on with a designer. Yep. Okay. Yeah, so that seems pretty, that seems pretty powerful. We also spoke about, you know, during COVID how everybody went virtual and, and, and that's just one aspect of technology.
And obviously with AI happening now, things are up in flux across the board. Designers seem more than a little nervous that they're going to be replaced, as do people in just about every single industry now. So if we were to look at, get you to put on your kind of futurist hat where you think technology, automation, any of this stuff, how it's going to impact businesses and hiring and it's kind of an impossible question I'm asking you.
Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team: Yeah. So I think with hiring, AI has been involved with hiring for a while. I think it's still a ways off in order for it to be really, really effective. Because if you post a job on a job board, that job board is going to come back and tell you here are some possible candidates that will be good for that.
Or if you put some criteria in there, I know one of the job boards that we used to use, it would, it would give every candidate a percentage. This candidate looks like they're x percent towards qualified for your job or things like that. There's always been Those things in there. There's been systems that auto reject people.
I don't think it's at a place right now where you can fully trust it. There's candidates sometimes when we post positions on Indeed. Indeed is one of my favorite places to post, but it'll have your normal candidates, and then it'll say, we don't think these candidates are qualified. And there's actually been times where my clients have hired the ones that fall into the.
We don't think these people are qualified just because the system is not smart enough to really detect things, like they're looking for basic, basic stuff or like basic positions. So especially for small businesses, a lot of times we're creating our own positions and things are a little different.
So we're not. It's not X equals X. It's like, well, X equals XYZ in our organization. So I think it does have room to get better with hiring, but I think it's. We're a long ways off from removing the people aspect to the hiring process.
I think for hiring, we might be able to use the tools to help us make decisions faster, but we still have to be involved. I know I don't hear of it as much anymore, but I know for the longest time there was a lot of push where have your candidates record themselves answering these questions before you ever have an interview with them.
And sometimes, like, there would be AI that would go and evaluate what a candidate said to tell you, okay, they're good or not good. And I. I just think I've had some clients in the past who've used that process that are like, we don't get great candidates. And I'm just like, well, of course you don't get great candidates because you're not spending any time with a candidate, but you're asking that candidate to spend all this time on you.
So you have a lot of people who decide not to do that part of the process. And so I think people really belong in the hiring process. You're hiring people. You're not hiring tools, you're hiring people. So you really need to be involved in your hiring process. I think tools will get better, the AI tools will get better.
But if you want people to really care about your business, you have to show from the beginning that you really care about them. And that's being involved in your hiring process and not just leaving it up to AI. The other thing I think when it comes to jobs is jobs will change as technology changes.
If you look at interior design now and the tools and Everything that are out there, even just running your business in general. So you think of like marketing tools and accounting tools and all those things. And then you take into consideration the actual interior design tools and systems.
They are very different than what was available 30 years ago or even 20 years ago. And then if you go back and what interior design was 40 years ago, there's different tools that are helping to get to the same end result which is a client space being changed and developed and made into what they're hiring you to do.
And you know, and everything. The tools are always going to change in business. Some tools are going to make things easier. Some tools you're going to say these are not right for me and our business is going to change. But it can we really say I don't know that it has eliminated too many jobs so far like technology and tools in the interior design space.
It's just made it different. It's made it so we can do our jobs a little easier. It's making so maybe communication is better or we can be more accurate with things. And so I think the AI will make things easier and better. I don't think it's worth any place soon where it's going to be full like job elimination or things like that or where you can depend on AI instead of hiring.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: I, I agree 100 at this event I was at last night, those two same designers who are both veteran designers, been in the business for over 20 years, they were taught, they were giggling to the. Not giggling, sorry. They were talking to each other about. They were giggling to be honest about piece of drafting software that both of them have played with and they said they just are terrible at it.
But they, they can have a 22 year old out of school who will just smoke them in using that piece of software. But if you were to ask that 22 year old to run the business to design you know, a complete home renovation or how to interact with clients or how to get new business, they'd be lost.
Right. And so sometimes you know there are skills in the business that the technology you think you're falling behind but you don't really. The principal doesn't need to understand that stuff doesn't need to do that on a day to day.
And I come back to what we've talked about today with how you educate your clients in preparation for this talk. You know I did a bunch of research on, on what you do specifically but also like what your industry does.
And so I feel like I know a lot more today than I did A week ago, AI being trained is pulling all of this information out of the Internet and that's where it's, it's coming up and being, making its decisions based on this information.
Well, until they've sat down with you and pulled all of this stuff like today, what I've learned today, I, I know more today than I did yesterday. So until AI can train on your specific knowledge set, to my mind, you are producing a superior service to anything that the most, you know, billion dollar AI system could do.
And the same goes for interior designers, their years of experience of understanding things on a almost visceral level. Right. There's the, the fear of AI taking our jobs, to me seems ridiculous at this point.
Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team: Yeah, well, and also if you think about it, like if you think about why do people hire you versus the other company in town and it's because you offer something to the clients that the clients want. Because you connect with different people than that other company, it doesn't necessarily make it so your designs are necessarily better than the other company.
It's just you're offering something to these clients that those clients want, and that other company is offering something to those clients that those clients want. AI right now is just kind of that, that blanket tool. It will take a lot of work and a lot of input in order for it to be you and that AI to produce other results for that other organization.
So when you can sit there from years of experience to say, well, yes, based on my education, this makes sense, but based on how I know people actually use this room, use this part of their house, use whatever in this area of the country that we're in.
No, that doesn't make sense here. We need to do something else. Like a few years ago I was in Arizona actually, speaking at two conferences on back to back weekends. And I live in Florida. So I was just like, there's no, I don't have time to fly home in between and fly right back out to the same city.
So I stayed a week in Arizona and I did a lot of hiking, a lot of walking around. And one of the things I noticed on houses out there was they have like the big walls of doors. They're just kind of like you can open up the, pretty much the entire wall and get air in and stuff when it's not super hot or super cold out there.
And I was just like, that would never work in Florida. You could have that on your house, but you would never open it because it's humid, there's lots of bugs. Like, no, like it looks cool. And I people and I was walking around in places where people were using it because it was the right time of year and they were able to have this.
I was like, but the climate's completely different. But if you just look at, oh, what does someone want when they want the outside to feel like the inside and there's, you know, there's not that separation. Oh, we're gonna put this in there. But that doesn't work everywhere. It doesn't work. You know, you have places where it's like you need to different elements.
A house that their windows are on, you're going in and like helping to redo a house and the windows are on one side. Are they facing the light or are they not? That's going to make a difference of what you bring into that room where there's all those things where you have to have that human element and you have to see things and you have to understand things and you have to pull out those little things with your clients that are going to make it the place that they want in AI at least as it is today.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Can't do that. Yeah, not even close. Not even close. Okay, that is all the official questions I have on my list here.
Is there anything I've, is there anything I've missed? You think that I, that we could cover?
Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team: No, I think we're pretty good. We've talked about a lot of different things when it comes to hiring and onboarding. You know, one of the things that I will just say because we touched a little bit on delegating and that fear of delegating.
So there's just a question that I always like to put out to people when they're just like, well, maybe I should keep it myself or should I delegate it? And I always like the question of does it have to be done by you or does it just have to be done right? And if it just has to be done right, you can hire someone and train someone to do it right.
And at different stages of your business, that answer is going to be different. Because when you are have a smaller team in your business, there's going to be things that have to be done by you. Like we said, there's a lot of people, you're the principal designers, your clients are coming for you.
It's going to look completely different than if it's still your name on the door, but you have a 50 person team. And people know that while they're working, while they're coming to XYZ organization, they're not necessarily going to work for you. So there's different stages of your business where some things have to be done by you right now, and then other stages of your business, you're gonna say, no, I can finally delegate that.
I don't need to do it. But just challenge yourself and always, just remember, you can train somebody to do it. Right. You can train someone to do it the way it needs to be done for your business and your organization. So don't be afraid to let go and to delegate what needs to be delegated so you can spend your time and energy where you need to spend your time and energy in your business instead of trying to do it all for sure.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Because there's so many jobs that a solo designer is looking after that they really don't want to be looking after. Yeah. You know, so why not find somebody to take that off your plate, and you can do what you love and do it for more clients and make more money and have a better life and all that good stuff.
Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team: Yes, yes, exactly.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, thanks, Jamie. This has been great. I'll make sure to include all your contact, informal information in the. The show notes and all that kind of stuff. So that's good. I think we're good.
I really appreciate you taking your time today.
Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team: Yes. Thank you so much for having me.
Why Interior Designers Need a Different Approach to Hiring
Most design firms don't need full-time employees to start building an effective team. In fact, Jamie reveals that many designers can transform their businesses with strategic part-time support:
Design assistants who handle production work for 15-20 hours/week
Virtual assistants managing email, scheduling, and basic client communication
Project coordinators keeping timelines on track and handling vendor communication
Specialized contractors who handle specific aspects of your business process
This flexibility allows designers to start delegating with lower financial commitment while testing what support actually moves the needle in their business.
The Designer's Hiring Blueprint?
According to Jamie, successful hiring comes down to a structured process that includes:
Getting clear on what problem you're solving (not just "I need help")
Defining success metrics for the role before you post it
Writing job descriptions that attract the right people and naturally filter out poor fits
Conducting revealing interviews that go beyond basic qualifications
Onboarding effectively so your new team member succeeds from day one
The difference between designers who build great teams and those who struggle isn't luck – it's having a clear, strategic process for finding and integrating the right people.
Transform Your Design Business Through Strategic Hiring
After implementing Jamie's strategies, designers report dramatic business transformations:
More creative freedom as administrative tasks are handled efficiently
Increased capacity for new clients without working 70-hour weeks
Higher project values as you have time to focus on business development
Lower stress levels with reliable support systems in place
Ability to take actual vacations knowing your business continues smoothly
The ultimate goal for many designers is to get back to doing what they love - actual design work - instead of drowning in paperwork and project management. Strategic hiring makes this possible by putting the right support in place.
Connect with Jamie Van Cuyk - Growing Your Team
If you want to chat with Jamie and learn more about her hiring strategies for interior designers, you can reach her at:
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