You're Working Too Hard: Interior Design Procurement Doesn't Have to Be This Way
How successful design firms are scaling their businesses by transforming their procurement systems
If you're like most interior designers, there's a good chance you didn’t start your own business because of your unrequited love of purchase orders, vendor emails, and procurement tracking spreadsheets.
In today’s podcast episode, Brittanie Elms of My Design Assistant reveals why doing everything yourself is not only super stressful, it’s actually costing you money. Her clients are proof that transforming procurement chaos into a streamlined operation actually pays for itself.
And hey, it's not just about procurement...we all know that our businesses should have better systems in place, but who has time to figure that out?
Join us for this candid conversation where Brittanie reveals:
Why sending items to a receiver actually saves you money
The crucial systems every interior design business needs from day one
How to know when your business is ready for outsourcing
Real procurement horror stories (and how to avoid them)
Why retainers are non-negotiable for successful procurement
Listen to the podcast…
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Watch the podcast…
Chapters
0:00:00 Intro
0:00:39 Origin Story
0:07:46 Pain Points
0:16:05 Systems & Processes
0:20:44 How Will My Design Assistant Help Me?
0:25:10 Solo Interior Designers
0:30:16 Procurement Nightmares
0:35:17 Procurement Success Stories
0:38:48 The University of Interior Design Systems and Processes
0:42:51 Free Resources
0:45:37 Why Designers Should Use a Receiver
0:48:11 Why Designers Need to Collect a Retainer
0:52:28 Interior Design and Technology
0:58:35 Artificial Intelligence
1:04:44 How Can My Design Assistant Help You???
1:07:10 Outro
Read the transcript…
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Brittanie, can you describe for our listeners what you do for designers? What my design assistant does for interior designers?
Brittanie Elms - My Design Assistant: Absolutely. So my design assistant primarily we offer two divisions of services. We do procurement management, which is, you know, helping to quote or sometimes source and track product from start to finish for designers projects. And then on the other hand, we do some consulting, online business management and project management and system setup. So really we work cohesively as a team to streamline your systems and make you have bigger impact with less input.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: In my research for doing this interview, I looked into your background, and it's kind of unique. You've got a background in both psychology and case management. How did that become My Design Assistant? What was your kind of path to becoming this?
Brittanie Elms - My Design Assistant: Yeah, my path of employment was always really windy. So the funny thing is I wanted to go to school for psychology. I've always been super interested in how the brain works, how people tick. Um, definitely like crime junkie, true crime, all that stuff. Like, I just like to see how people work. I. But somebody had told me I talk too much to be a psychologist. So instead I went for music and I was classically trained for as a classical vocalist.
And then that just didn't stick. So I had five different majors in college and eventually landed on psychology and graduated with that degree and then thought, well, what am I going to do with this now? So to put me through college, I worked in banking because that seemed like a really responsible thing to do and did a lot of the different positions. I was a teller, I was a banker, worked in management all of that good stuff, and just realized that did not light me up at all. I kind of got everything that I wanted to get out of that. And for me, that's just something when I'm working, I really need to feel like a challenge or something that I'm working toward.
So with my psych degree nearly completed, I went into case management. And from there, I had this path. I was going to work for the county. And this case management was just a stepping stone to get there. And it was a beautiful, awesome position where I worked with individuals with developmental disabilities. They were typically diagnosed prior to the age of 18, and we helped develop jobs. So I was on the behavior team. I also was on the job development team. And then I did their case management, which was setting goals for them, maintaining their goals, making sure that they were getting proper care, that they were being heard, advocating for them, and things like that.
A big part of that role when I came in was the typical caseload for a case manager was 40 people. And I had 84 at the peak of my case management tenure. And there were, like, no processes in place. And so for me, as, like, a puzzle process lover, I was like, sweet, let's dig in. I can do this. And so through that, that's where I was first introduced to Trello. And I just started, like, tracking all of our client meetings, their goals, and things like that, and developing a system that I was eventually able to hand off upon my maternity leave.
Which brings me into My Design, because once I went on maternity leave, I was kind of told that when I returned to my case management position, it would not look the same, but they couldn't really give me more details than that. And in that industry, it just really is largely dependent on grants and current laws and what's going on.
And what I didn't realize is kind of my division was closing. So as I wrapped up, I was in my last term of getting my degree. I was super pregnant with my son, and they had made a clerical error where I thought I was going to be graduated before he was born.
And then they came back and they said, actually, you need one more class. And I was like, I don't want to go to school while I'm pregnant. Like, this is terrible. Like, not when we're so close to my due date. But it ended up being this career exploration class. And it was in, like. All signs of this class led me to interior design.
It was like, you should be in something creative. You should be like, you like, creating environments. It was just like, everything kept pointing me in this direction. And I was like, I never, like, that's not a career. That's not, like, a real person career. And so part of the assignment was to talk to somebody in the industry.
And so I was like, well, I don't want to talk to just a whole bunch of random people, so I'm going to pick one person and see what happens. And so I emailed her, and she later told me she was absolutely dreading responding to it. And I was just like, oh, gosh, this is going to be like, I don't even want to have this conversation. But she forced herself to respond anyway, and luckily she liked me and she hired me. So that was my first job after maternity leave, transitioning directly from that case management. And I had zero clue what I was doing, aside from what I had seen on, like, hgtv. Definitely a big, like, fixer, upper and Property Brothers fan. My old roommate and I would sit there and watch that for hours. And so I was just so committed to, like, I will not let her regret this decision. I am going to learn everything I absolutely can. So I just, like, dug into all the podcasts, all the literature that I possibly could, like, during nap times and things like that, to learn it.
And the reality was she only needed somebody part time, and I was coming from full time to part time. And so then it started crossing my mind that maybe there were some other things I could do on the side, but from home, because I had a new baby at home, and I really didn't want to be leaving him all the time. It was hard enough to leave him when I did. And so with her blessing and listening to podcasts and hearing a lot about what these designers were needing, but they couldn't bring in a full team member, and they were needing all of these extra things, I'm like, I can do this. I was already working from home one day a week anyway.
So I'm like, I'm already doing this virtually everything they're saying. And so that's how all this history led up to the start of My Design Assistant.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: So you literally were the. My Design Assistant. You were the first.
Brittanie Elms - My Design Assistant: I was. And it's funny because the name My Design Assistant was born out of.
I'd always joked when we first started that we were everybody's dirty little secret, because whenever people would inquire about services or email us, they'd be like, I really don't want anyone to know that I'm hiring anyone. I really want them to think it's coming from me. Like, your branding isn't going to be anywhere, right?
And I'm like, no, it won't. So then My Design Assistant was like, well, it's so easy because I can just say, well, I'm going to give this to my design assistants and no one's any wiser.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, so let's, let's paint a picture for designers of what they can get working with you. And I figured the best way to start doing that is to look for pain points. And I want to know what are the typical or the most outrageous expensive mistakes you see designers making in their. Either their procurement or in processes kind of writ large.
Brittanie Elms - My Design Assistant: Yeah. So I mean, the most expensive. Expensive is always going to come down to the process. And the reason I say that is because a lot of times where we're spending the bulk of our time and where if we're comparing two design firms next to each other, we can directly tell why one is going to be paying way more in our fees than another.
And that's because we have some design firms that will present an order in bulk. So they're presenting maybe three rooms and then all of that gets approved and then we go in and we're ordering for all three rooms. And the reason being is when we can sit there, break all of that into the purchase orders and start immediately placing those orders, then we can just like it's all time bulk.
We're working or time blocked. We're working super efficiently and we're not having to bounce between orders and invoices and things like that. It all goes very systematically versus if we have somebody who's ordering a little bit here and ordering a little bit here and just maybe a little bit over here.
Now we're having to re enter that phase multiple times. And that is the biggest time suck as far as expenses go. Then the next would be delivering directly to the client. And they get a lot of pushback on whether or not people want to deliver to a receiver.
But clients are so unreliable. And that is with all of the love, but also like, I do have controversial, like, opinion on whether or not they should be included in that process. Because the reality is like, do we really expect them to be inspecting all of the product, the furniture, things like that?
Do they know what they're looking for? And when they've got done with their normal job and they have to come home and now they have to do part of the design firm's job, like that doesn't feel good either. And so I know a lot of times they want to do that to save money. But what I would argue is, a lot of times we can save a lot more money and stress if we have that going to a receiver, because someone has to be checking in that product.
Someone has to be tracking that product, and we can track it a lot less if we're not having to tell a client that it's coming. So if we know, okay, these products are all coming within the next couple weeks, then we're checking maybe two times a week to say, okay, is this still on track?
All right, receiver, you're expecting this. Hey, did you get it? Versus. Oh, sorry. If we're tracking and it's going to a client or a designer, we have to make sure someone's there. So we're always checking. And then that changes. Right. Like, we checked it early this morning, and now it's delayed until tomorrow.
And then it makes us look disorganized, so we're like, hey, client, actually, it's not coming today, and we're sorry. And it's really beyond our control. So just knowing the demands of how much time that takes, that is the biggest cost factor, I would say, because then ultimately that drives up the cost of the whole project.
The next thing I would say is if you're doing custom work, if you're not researching really closely who your custom people are. So we've had with different designers where it's like, oh, I'm going to go to this person for this project and this person for this project and this person for this project.
And it's great to have people in their zones. Absolutely. But what we have found when you're working with specific workrooms and you're working with them really consistently is they get to know you. So then they know, like, oh, Brittanie sometimes doesn't understand this. Or I know Brittanie sometimes misses this part, and I really want to make sure she understands this thing.
Or Brittanie typically does this. And so I'm going to ask her about that in this project, because she didn't mention it this time. And I know I have, like, a general rule with clients. When they say to order bar stools, I never assume it's barstools, because that's so interchangeable. It's like, are they barstools or counter stools?
Like, which ones are we ordering? And you want someone who's going to be doing those checkpoints, because at the end of the day, designers do have a little bit of an unfair position where they're expected to be, from the client's perspective, professionals and everything. So you're supposed to know everything about faucets and plumbing and you're supposed to know everything about tile and everything about solid surfaces and everything about the furniture.
And I think it's okay to lean into those professionals and allow them to step up and be the wealth of knowledge in that area. And that's a big way to save money because when you're going to reduce the amount of mistakes that are coming in because they know how to talk to you.
And then also you're getting more consistency in your project or product and you know what to expect from them.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Yep, that all makes sense. And I would maybe even add one thing on top of that is how your clients perceive the jobs are going.
If things run perfectly smooth, you've got happy client and nothing ever runs perfectly smooth. But right, the smoother they can run, the better. Happy clients. And considering that residential design is generally success is based on referrals. Happy clients refer, unhappy clients don't refer.
So but we can never know what's been lost there. So the things you all mentioned, you could almost apply a dollar sign to those mistake here that cost this much. But then, you know, who knows that if you had been presenting a more streamlined, efficient service to your clients, what that could have turned into a year down the road in three new clients.
Brittanie Elms - My Design Assistant: Yeah. And I mean, even on that, something that I stress to clients as much as I can is don't promise timelines because we have no control over those. You can promise an estimated or a target or you know, you're sourcing in accordance with that.
But just this last, you know, at the end of 2024, we had a situation where a client wanted a bed in time for Christmas. Beginning of December came. We had checked up constantly to get an update. And as soon as we got that update, they said actually it's being pushed out till January.
So they had told us it will ship first week of December and then we got to first week of December and they said it's now going to be January. So now disappointed client, because this is what they wanted, but there's no way we can deliver. And so I think the timelines become really important of understanding what is a reasonable timeline, when should we be pushing, but then letting them know too, like these things are going to happen.
And putting yourself in the position of we're expert problem solvers, so if this does happen, we're going to have plan A, B and C here to help you out with it. But just know these things do happen. It's very normal. It's not Just you. It's not just your project, but making sure that they're aware it will come up.
I need you to be open with me and talking to me. And on the side of that is having meetings that are not design meetings. Meetings where somebody like just a check in to say, so how are things going? How are you right now? Because the reality is this is highly emotional for the people going through this.
And even if it goes exceptionally, exceptionally well, they're paying out a lot of money. And some people are really financially sensitive. And so they could be having doubts that they're just not expressing. And you can be excited and feel a little buyer's remorse at the same time.
And that doesn't mean that you're not excited, but it takes one little nuance to flip that emotion more to one side or the other. And so I think those little check ins of like, okay, we're not talking about design, we're not talking about invoices.
I just want to talk about you and how things are going right now and how can I support you through this process?
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: So in addition to procurement, I know that systems and processes is a big thing that you do to help designers. Can you kind of describe that end of your service?
Brittanie Elms - My Design Assistant: Yeah. So what we've realized is, you know, we do the procurement, but it is so highly intertwined with the rest of the processes, how information is delivered to us, how we're interacting with the team.
And ultimately what our goal is, is to help people be more productive, be more profitable, and to really feel good in their business. So with the processes, we do come at it from a few different spectrums. So one is we have an online business manager.
Her name is Lachelle. And for people who are unfamiliar with what that position is, that is somebody who is looking at your business from a whole and they kind of come in and take charge. And so like when she's working on our business, what she's doing is hiring people, making sure that, like we're following up with certain clients, helping us develop new services, making sure that we've got everything scheduled to make these things happen.
She is like the master firefighter for all little fires that could be popping up in the business. Essentially. Then we have our project manager who is exactly what you would think. So they're the person who's looking at the projects as a whole, helping to make sure that everything is staying on time.
Then we have our onboarding specialist, and that person is making sure that your onboarding flow is working fantastically, that you're hitting all of those critical points that you need to discuss. What we find is a lot of times people want to avoid some of the icky, sticky situations up front because that's not fun.
And nobody really wants to talk about what happens if people don't pay their invoices or things like that. But also you want to talk about it up front when people are excited because they're not going to be like, oh, ew, like, why are you talking to me about invoices? When they're like, let's just get this started.
I'm beyond excited to be jumping into this project right now. So we're trying to make sure that these critical points get hit and that you're really consistent, because the last thing you want to do is get started in a project and then be like, oh, shoot, we didn't talk about X, Y and Z.
And now it feels really awkward to bring this up. So that is the point of our onboarding specialist. She primarily works in Honeybook, but other systems as well. And then we have just in general system setup. So these can be like a la carte and kind of blended together as well.
But with system setup, what we're looking at is how are you operating right now, what is working, what is not working, and how can we simplify it? A lot of times people are working way too hard. They're reinventing the wheel with every new project. Information is kind of scattered, and so then they're having to go back and find it.
And it takes a really long time to find the details that they're looking for. So what we want to do is come in and ensure one, like, if you already have habits, that we're recognizing those. Because a lot of people think, well, I don't have processes. Like, I haven't developed any processes. And processes are habits. That's all they are.
And so then at the end of the day, you can have good ones and you can have not so good ones. But we want to make sure that the ones that you've developed are ones that are working. So we're going to look at what is unchangeable about you. What is the thing that you're just like, this is who I am, this is who I will always be, and I'm not changing that factor.
And it's like, okay, so how do we build a system around this that not only works for you, but is also going to bring the team in and make sure that they're staying well informed? Everybody's on the same page, and that information is getting where it needs to go. So a lot of times we're going to recommend a project management system.
My absolute favorite is Teamwork. But there's lots of systems out there and you can work in whatever one works best for you. A lot of times that just depends on how you digest information and how you need to view it. And then we lean heavily into automations because a lot of times we're expecting one team member to go to these three different places.
And I do have a rule on that. I always say no more than three, but ideally no more than two. But three if we absolutely must. Places that we have to go to update because what ends up happening is Susie goes to update in these different places, an emergency email pops through and the third one gets forgotten.
And now that place isn't getting updated or it's partially updated. And now no one has a guaranteed place to go to get the correct information.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, so say I'm an interior /design company and I'm curious about your. More than curious. Like, I know that I need help and. But I'm different. My, my business is different than the other designers. How would that process do you have like kind of a formal auditing, like a set of questions that you would ask to kind of make it easier for you to understand who I am as my special little snowflake and how you can help me, what needs to be change.
Maybe there's things that, like, I have some systems, but I don't have this. And you're like, no, you, you need that. So I'm curious if there's an auditing intake process and systems that you think are essentials, like across the board.
Brittanie Elms - My Design Assistant: Absolutely. So we have a questionnaire that we have people answer when they're scheduling their discovery call. And that questionnaire is designed to give us more insight into the type of business that you have. So one of my beliefs is that a lot of times you don't need to hire somebody right now.
You may need to hire somebody for consulting or, you know, just a quick, like, where do I go from here? How do I get started? But jumping into hiring into an individual and having that commitment may not be the best decision for your business. So one of the questions that we have in that questionnaire is we're asking, talking about the type of leads you have.
So do you consistently have procurement in your business? Are you always in a state of procurement or are you feast or famine? Where sometimes we're super busy and sometimes we're not. If we're feast or famine it really doesn't make sense for you to bring us in right now on the procurement side because that is a retainer commitment and you're agreeing to pay a certain amount and if that's not going to be covered by your business expenses, which is the ultimate or your business income, which is the ultimate goal, we just don't like putting people in that position.
So sometimes people are like, yes, I absolutely need this and okay, you know your business more than we do, so we're going to trust you on that. But we would likely steer you in another direction of maybe this is a consulting appointment, maybe we're doing a strategy call instead to determine where we can start to streamline things.
What systems are you in? Something we do sometimes is like SOP development where we're looking over everything and we do have this as a free resource where we have kind of the template of some standard operating procedures that direct like how are you putting things in place?
We also have a document, it's called the lifecycle of an order. And the whole purpose of that document is there's dropdowns. Again, this is a free resource on our website, but it has drop downs of different roles within your business. So ideally one you're seeing all of the things that you're handling, all of the things you could potentially hand off and where you're needing to devise systems around it.
So all that to say everybody's unique, everybody thinks that their business is very different in a lot of ways, like the feel, the vibe, all of that stuff. Of course, like that's what brings people to you, right? Because you and your snowflake self of being this individual, special person.
But at the bare bones, what you're needing is a specific place for things to go. Whether that's requests, communication, whatever it may be that needs to be absolutely determined for you. Methods of communication.
We like to separate methods of communication if we can. So what I mean by that is like an orders email for orders. Even if it's just you, an orders email if you have any intention ever of expanding your team. And the reason being is what happens is if it's Brittanie at my design assistant and every vendor is ordering or messaging me for these orders and now I bring in an orders person, every vendor is still messaging me and now I have to forward those emails on and that's super annoying.
Whereas if you just have orders at then now that is always the email. And even if you have Susie and Jane and Bob and whoever that come into that position, that method of communication never changes. And it just reduces us potentially having to miss important messages.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Residential design is such a unique industry in that it's micro sized companies makes up the bulk of the businesses to the point where solo designers are still like the majority of interior design businesses.
So that ties into what you just said. So when you're a solo designer, you do everything, right? You do everything from client outreach, marketing, you do the design, obviously, you do the accounting, you do everything. How do you help designers who are in that position, that that mindset of having to do everything and transform them into being able to let things go and let you do things and then maybe then they can kind of expand on that going forward as well.
So maybe that we're typing into your, your psychology background here a little bit.
Brittanie Elms - My Design Assistant: Yeah. So I mean, at the end of the day, this is about trust. And the reason they're holding on to all the hats is, you know, one maybe trust of whether or not they're going to bring in the business to cover adding another individual, but also the trust in other individuals to take on those tasks.
So then they're holding on. There's this belief that I have to do everything. No one is going to wear this hat or look as good in it as I do. And so they're holding on to that. So we have a couple different approaches. So one is, okay, if you're not ready to hand things off in the day to day like you, your trust level isn't there yet.
What are the things that have been hanging on that back burner forever that are not getting done? What is the I know I need to do this to move the fort or move the business forward. That could be outreach for certain things they're needing to schedule appointments for maybe this podcast or I want to talk to this particular rep, I want to set up this trade account, whatever it may be.
What are those things that you don't view as completely critical that you can hand off that still need to be done? So now you can start to develop that relationship with that individual that you're bringing in. You're still starting to understand communication styles and things are still getting done, but you're not so worried about, oh my gosh, if this doesn't happen, my, like, my business is done, my day is done.
Because really that's like the level sometimes that people are bringing it to you. It's like, well, if this doesn't happen, like, everything unravels, it's all done. So, okay, we don't have to start critical. We can start on those background things and still build that momentum. The other thing is looking at the stuff that you have on your list today and identifying what must be you.
So there's another business owner. I hear her say this a lot. I think it's Sunira Madani. And she'll say, do, delegate, delete. So what is the stuff that you can do? What can you delegate? What can you put off or delete? And nine times out of 10, when you're looking at your tasks, the reality is you only need to do a small portion of those tasks.
Even the bigger tasks that involve you can still be broken down into things that other people can do. Maybe there's some checkpoints there a lot of times, even if it's a big task, maybe you have a ton of entry items that you need to put in. Okay, so you record a loom of you doing one of those and then you send it off to someone else.
And now they know exactly how you put it in. They know all the touch points. If you use a tool called Tango. And that one records screenshots of everything that you're doing. So not only does it literally give them step by step directions, it takes a screenshot of everything that you click.
So they are seeing what they need to touch and they're getting the step by step directions. And all it took was the time it took you to do the task and maybe like a little judging at the end of it and you're good. And then the final thing is if you're just like, I'm not even ready to talk to somebody about delegating right now.
This just doesn't seem within like the realm of something I can do. Do a time audit and evaluate, evaluate how you are spending your time currently and then compare that against how you feel like you should be spending your time. And not only are you going to find like those sneaky little time thieves, like when you were going to post on social media and you weren't going to, you were going to engage for 20 minutes and now you've been on there for an hour.
But you're also going to start to see the tasks that you have been doing that really I think could very easily be handed to someone else. So if you're looking in your CEO role or your like networking role, if all of your time is spent calling vendors, updating clients, doing things, some of these things that are very much a part of the day to day in interior design, but very little of it is spent doing interior design or building relationships or networking or exploring your local area to discover new vendors and makers and partners in your projects, you're probably not maximizing your time as the business owner.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, I want to circle back to procurement a little bit and get some kind of specific examples that you've seen when you've started working with new clients, new designers. Can you give me a few kind of common procurement nightmares that are consistent across the board, or maybe some that were, like, not consistent, but, like, crazy interesting?
Brittanie Elms - My Design Assistant: I'd say, like, the biggest nightmare we've had. There was a retail vendor that we worked with, and this was years ago, and there was a little. There was a SKU change. And so initially it was an error that our team member had made, which is gut wrenching, but it does happen. So the item got delivered, it was made to order, it was a change in the cushions.
And so of course we're going to cover that. Like, that's our error. We're going to make sure that gets fixed. But the fabric was discontinued, and they only had enough fabric to make the cushions one more time. Great. Okay, that's all we need. So we called them, and I swear to you, I made them repeat back to me like, five different times in this process for them to make sure they had the right product.
So even then, like, the original, maybe it wasn't us, I don't know. But oh, my gosh. And I'd be like, I need you to confirm. And then I would describe it, because what it was was the difference between, like, bench cushions and individual cushions. I'm like, this is what we are needing. We cannot have this happen again. Like, you guys are discontinued on fabric.
There's nothing we can do. We absolutely need to make sure that this is made correctly. It gets delayed, delayed, delayed, delayed. Finally gets delivered, and they made them incorrectly. And so now there's no more fabric and we just have these two cushions.
So what we were able to do was have a local work room use the remaining fabric from the incorrect cushions and make the correct cushion covers. I still have PTSD from working with that vendor. Like, if I can avoid it, I do try to at all costs.
We did just do an order with them, and it went just fine. Like, everything was on time, everything was done correctly, but the communication was just so nightmarish through that whole process. Uh, so that was, I would say, the absolute biggest nightmare we've ever experienced.
And it's really hard, I think, when you're working with bigger companies like this, when it was a huge retail company, but they have so many different divisions, and so we've had one designer who she's like, the most frustrating thing about working with these big companies is they cannot problem solve, they cannot step out of their systems because they are so tied to those, and everyone within the company is tied to those.
But then once we have this little thing, no one knows actually how to problem solve it. And then all the onus becomes like, it's all the responsibility of the designer to figure that out and try to problem solve sometimes the most simple things. And that was exactly kind of what happened in this case, where we're talking to the company, but the company is not making the furniture, it's someone else entirely.
And so then we have like three more communication chains past ours that we have no control over. So I'd say, like we have been in business, it'll be eight years, I believe in February. And that was the biggest nightmare. So I think that's pretty good.
Over eight years since we were able to find a resolution and everything worked out pretty well. Majority of the time that the issues we're running into is manufacturing defects and a lot of fabric issues. So we had a period, three different fabric orders.
This was toward the middle of last year. We had three entirely different fabric orders from different vendors, but they all had to get treatment, like Teflon treatment. And they all had abnormal, normally large shrinkage in the fabric to where we ended up having to order more.
And we had never encountered that before, like shrinkage, as expected. But it was just so bizarre to have this across different design firms and just different companies entirely. And so I don't know what was going on in the fabric and textile industry, but something funky to where those were shrinking.
But those are things. Again, we were able to go back to the vendor and just say, we know this is beyond the normal level. We need to get this replaced. It puts a delay on the project. But overall, I recommend building in cushion. So especially if we have something custom, I always like to put a little extra padding in the timeline.
So then if something like this comes up, then, okay, the client's not going to be super affected because we've already built this little contingency into our timeline.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, let's go the other direction. And can you share a story of maybe how inputting the correct procurement systems into one of your clients businesses has helped transform their business?
Brittanie Elms - My Design Assistant: Absolutely. So during COVID we were working with a designer who we talked before the recording, had to reduce her team. So she had different divisions in her team. She did staging, she had Airbnbs, and then she had this design side, right before her team got reduced, she took on these two massive projects for these big time athletes and she was managing it all on her own.
So when we first came in, there was really not much of a process in place. She hadn't been handling all of that stuff. She wasn't even really familiar with her product management system because someone else had been in there. So we were able to come in, kind of do a full audit of the project because we needed to determine what had been ordered, what hadn't been ordered, what product could be removed off of proposals and things like that.
And then from there we built in kind of a communication system with her. So she was always moving. She was kind of all over the place as far as her communication style went, because she never really knew where she was going to be. So she was just going with whatever was convenient and whatever program she was in at that time.
But it made it really challenging to capture that communication. So what we ended up doing was creating a Google form with a list of questions that she could then submit any of her orders to. And we just had different communication channels. So if there was something that she needed directly from us, if it was a question she was asking, she could ask that in chat and then somebody would be monitoring that.
We could respond to that right away. If it was order specific, then it went into this form so that we could go in and check the orders, make sure that we knew exactly what order she had approved, so we could go in and place them right away. And from there then we built in more the tracking system.
So we had brought her into our teamwork. We created tasks for all of the outstanding items. In Teamwork, we can create reports. So we do this for some of our clients who are in our system where we can create reports to show exactly where the product is right now, add any notes.
So then that way she's able to see anything at any time. What we like about doing that in Teamwork 2, or any project management system that you're using, is then the task is there that shows the estimated due date of when the item is supposed to arrive. But then you have all notes of every interaction that we've had.
So anytime we're going to call, you can see when we're going to follow up on something so that if the designer comes in and there is a question about something, they have the answers at their fingertips and that's ultimately what we want for the whole team. So from there then we were able to help her then bring in a design assistance Then bring in a project manager and then a procurement manager as well.
That effectively worked us out of that role and we started doing business management. What we were able to do is have really seamless delivery and installations of really massive, massive projects.
So in that we were handling their billing, we were handling the product orders, we were handling the tracking, a lot of that back and forth communication. And by their last installation there was nearly no issues, which with such a huge project, that was like incredible.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, so it seems to me that in addition to obviously providing specific services to your clients, you also bring kind of an education perspective because you've worked with many, many different designers and many different companies that, that designers need to source.
You may you and your team have seen things that the ordinary interior designer with a smaller scope hasn't seen. So it seems like, and you, you're already kind of a teacher to them in terms of systems, processes, procurement. If I was to start a school tomorrow on interior design, business education and hire you as Professor Elms, what are like the crucial systems that you think would need to be on the curriculum from day one?
Brittanie Elms - My Design Assistant: Interesting. I think your onboarding system is the most critical. So I know that steps outside of our realm as far as like the procurement. But that is part of why we added that as a service, because that's where it all starts.
That's where you're going to be talking about your onboarding. That is where, or sorry, your timelines, your budget, how you're going to move through the project, and that's largely going to dictate everything else. The other reason that we really hone in on that is you're setting your boundaries.
And like you said, we can't help but bring in some of the education whenever we're working with our clients because of the fact we have seen how these things play out in real time and how it affects the rest of the team. So we always try to add in those little nuggets.
Obviously at the end of the day, someone can run their business however they want to, but we try to show like this is how we've seen it play out. So it can look like this, it can look like this. This is why we've seen it be beneficial. From there, I would say your communication systems, how you are going to be communicating internally, if that is, you know, if there's more than you, but usually you're going to have a finance person, how your clients are going to communicate with you.
Because the other thing that you have to consider too is again, if you're going to be bringing in a team later on. How's your team going to get that? So if we're trying to lift you out of being the bottleneck of your business, these are factors that you have to consider in the beginning.
So for example, we have some clients who use like a Google voice. We use a Google voice as a team. So then if a message comes in, it's accessible to the whole team, it can get assigned to whoever it to go to, but then anyone can revisit and see what needs to be done and it doesn't rest on you as the designer.
And then for procurement, who owns what, who is on the team, who owns what and at what stage when are you going to be alerting your clients of certain things? I think there's a delicate balance between how you inform them.
Because again, we've seen where it's like sometimes over informing leads to a lot more questions and now they want to know every little detail. Whereas on the other hand we've seen where people are like, hey, we're going to give you generally like everything's on track and like our progress toward our final delivery.
And that seems to be a lot less stressful because clients aren't expecting, you know, if we have to tell them, oh, the bed got delayed, we're sorry, but really they weren't expecting a final delivery for another few months anyway. That was information that wasn't really relevant to them if it was delivered or if it was going to be one month delayed.
They never needed to know that because it wasn't relative to how they were going to function. So I think understanding your timelines, how you promised them, realistically, how long it takes you to do things, and we do work with people to map that out and how you can do less but accomplish more.
So less action, but more impact.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay. I don't have the available cash to start up this interior design business school right now, and so that's not an option. But so let's say we've got a designer who doesn't have the consistency in their business yet, like we talked about earlier, to bring you on to do all of these things.
So maybe you offer a consulting service for them. Are there any other resources that you recommend somebody who's in that point, they know they need to improve their procurement and the systems that go along with that, but they can't afford to hire you. What can they do now to kind of get the ball rolling maybe?
Brittanie Elms - My Design Assistant: Absolutely. So we do have a 25 day challenge that's a Free resource. I don't know that that's on our website yet, but on our Instagram, it's in our bio. And the reason that challenge was developed was so that someone coming in to work with us, we had tools to give them to say, like, you don't have these things now, but, like, this is what we wish you knew.
And so what it does is it walks people through like 20 minutes a day implementing these small strategies. And we have a resource library that goes with it. So within that, it's that lifecycle of an order checklist that I talked about. It's tips on how to store your passwords and things like that, how to manage your email, different automations that you can implement.
So that is, I would say, our best resource that we could give someone to say, like, this is what you can do right now. These are actionable tips you can take to streamline your business. I think the other thing that is a little less exciting is understanding the vision of your business because it's so easy to get pulled in all of these different directions.
And a lot of times, even if we're consulting, I can lead you in a direction if you don't understand the vision or the why of what you're doing. And so it becomes so, so important to understand that, because in order for the process to truly be aligned with you and whatever steps that you're taking, you need to understand why you're doing them in the first place and what you're trying to achieve with them.
Because there's a lot of different things out there that work for a lot of very different people. And there's a reason that they work with them because they're aligned with how they operate. But if my process that I'm recommending doesn't lead you where you want to go because you don't really know where you're going, the road can take you anywhere.
It's not going to be as effective.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Before we started recording, we were talking about designers using a receiver to. To hold on to deliveries as opposed to having them to get delivered to the home, the homeowner.
[62:06.7]
And you were saying a number of benefits. I would like you to kind of expand on that. Tell that story again also. But are if there's any other areas of procurement that designers, a lot of designers aren't doing but should be doing and kind of the benefits they could see if they started doing those things?
Brittanie Elms - My Design Assistant: Oh, yeah. So for the receiver, why we highly encourage this is one, we want to eliminate the client involvement and that's the designers client involvement as much as possible because they're hiring for a service and sometimes it's exciting as you're getting the items and it's like Christmas when they're coming in.
But really, at the end of the day, we need to get that information of whether or not that product was acceptable when it was received, all of those things right away. And now we're giving them a job to do and that's a lot less fun. And so we like to have it going to a receiver for that reason.
Now, the financial reason is a lot of times people think, well, I don't want to send to a receiver. My client's not going to like that. That's too expensive. But you will be spending that time somewhere. So majority of the time, if we're sending it to a client, we're having to track that product super regularly because we need to let the client know, or on our side, even the designer know when that product is going to arrive so that they can look at it, inspect it.
Nobody is like stealing it from the porch, anything like that. And if we're sending to a receiver, we can reduce that time dramatically because now all we need to know is estimated time frame of arrival. And then once that time elapse, then we can go back and say, hey, receiver, did you get this?
What is the condition? And if we have a really good receiver, they're letting us know right away. Sometimes we have to keep following up with them, but it's still, we know it's in someone's hands. The tracking is telling us that. So I would say back to your question of like, somebody who's just starting out and they really can't hire somebody right now.
Consider your receiver a part of your team I.e. the admin person that you don't have to hire, but they're definitely serving their value because they're holding onto that product, they're storing it, they're keeping it safe, they're confirming it's been delivered, they're doing that inspection, and then at the end of the day or end of the project, they can deliver it all completely.
Another aspect, as far as, like, what designers can do to streamline their procurement process is retainers, if you're not doing it already. And I know some people, I have one designer and she's like, I know what you're gonna say, and we've been going back and forth on this for years. To me, it's just the thing you have to do, get a retainer for your project.
I have seen Way too many times where we're going back and we're chasing money for items that have been delivered, because once they're delivered, what's your recourse? Like? They're not waiting on the product anymore. So it's like, oh, I'll get to it when I get to it.
So it doesn't make any sense. And it creates this negative emotion for them because now you're having to ask them for these funds over and over again. On the flip side, if you're somebody who's like, well, yeah, I invoice them as I need it. I send them the invoice, they pay it, we order, okay, let's look at that for a bigger project.
If somebody. No matter what it is, anytime someone comes and asks you for money again, we have a lot of people who are financially sensitive. Even if they're wealthy, it doesn't feel good. Whereas if somebody is like, this is what we're estimating the cost of the project is.
This is what we're sticking close to as possible. I need these funds from you. And they pay that one time. It's gone. Every day from now on is like Christmas because the funds are already gone. And now they're just seeing the benefit of what they've paid for versus if your invoice product.
Invoice product, it's negative, positive, negative, positive, negative, positive. And so we're looking at that generally from the team perspective and how quickly we can move, because a lot of times our designers are like, well, we need to get this product now, otherwise we're going to have to resource. So they order it before getting the invoice, and that's okay for the client perspective, but then now they're dragging their feet and paying.
And on the flip side, if you're like, we're not ordering until you pay, it feels like an ultimatum. So at the end of the day, I feel like even though it's a large sum of money and it feels uncomfortable to ask, you're asking one time for sure.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: I mean, it's always kind of boggled my mind a little bit. Interior design is definitely a luxury service at whatever price point, Right. Whoever your client is, it's taking a bite out of their bank account. And in other businesses that sell luxury products, whether it's cars or jewelry or airplanes, whatever you want to, they don't apologize for the fact that it's a luxury product or service.
And it seems interior design, we're always apologizing for the costs. And by doing something as simple as starting with that retainer, you have one discussion, you get the retainer and it's dealt with, as opposed to having to keep coming back for a bit more money and a bit more money and a bit more.
So I don't want to have 20 conversations where I'm reminding the customer that they are now going to have to dig into their pocket and give me more money. I'd rather do it once or twice and that's it. And if a designer is concerned about bringing on a receiver, because I've had this discussion before with designers, well, it's going to cost me money to.
I can just have it shipped to the client. That's next to nothing. That doesn't cost me the same. It's like. But it's going to cost you other things. Like we were talking earlier, how if the customer, if the homeowner has to be home to receive things, you're now putting them to work and they're aware of them…
Brittanie Elms - My Design Assistant: …to take the day off a lot of times. So now they have to take half the day off to receive the item at their home.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Yeah, and. And in a business where referrals are bread and butter, don't you want to make your customer feel like they have to do nothing? They have to do nothing. They, they get to select fabrics. That's what they get to do the fun stuff. They don't want to do the hard stuff.
Brittanie Elms - My Design Assistant: Right. Well, and then, I mean to even elaborate on that, now you have a return. So now the client is doing the returns and we love them. They're not great at it and they're not consistent and it's just a bit of an unfair position to put them in sometimes.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Kind of related of taking tasks out of. Out of our hands, the designers hands. Let's talk about technology. Software, tools, artificial intelligence, anything. Right now where. What do you use now in terms of technology to provide services for designers?
And maybe. Well, let's leave the AI stuff because that's going to change everything, but let's. What are you using right now?
Brittanie Elms - My Design Assistant: Yeah, so right now we use a tool called. Well, so we integrate ourselves into our designer systems, first of all. But everyone that we work with comes into our teamwork system.
And teamwork is our absolute favorite project manager tool management tool. Sorry, I'm struggling with consonants today. So it not only allows us to create all the tasks, the different projects, we can create companies within our teamwork. So we had a designer who started with us right before her maternity leave, and we helped her get through that, keep the project going.
Then while we were working together and doing her procurement, that enabled her to hire two more people and open a store. And so then once she had her two internal people, we were able to transition her company from our teamwork into her own teamwork. So we helped her build out all of her processes within that framework.
So the reason we love it is it allows us for a lot of automation. So we do the automations through tags. We have a chat system. So this becomes really important if we have like backordered items or something like that, because we want to make sure that the designer is getting notified right away. Right?
And then we're looking at not only are they notified, where are they going to see it, where is that going to stand out? So we can add a tag that says backordered and we can have it shoot out to all these different places or one specific place, just depending on who we're working with. Within that, there's also a calendar so we can time block.
And it automatically adds our tasks into calendars so that we can see where everything is. Some people love that, some people aren't. It just depends on if you're a time blocker. I like time blocking. Then we love Materio. Materio is a product management system.
And one of my favorite things about that is there are some automations that are already built into that particular system. So one is if you're somebody who's like, I really like to give my clients updates weekly. It adds everything in. So you can like select your week that you're wanting to give an update.
It's going to give the ETAs for items you can add in any special notes. It's tracking your activity so you can go in and share that weekly. And you're not having to compile a big long list. And that feels really just cumbersome. So this makes it really quick. And I think it's a really good practice for the designer as well to go in and kind of feel like, okay, this is where the team is, this is everything that happened this week.
And like, what do I feel good about sharing? You know, is there something like, oh, I maybe don't want to share this part yet, or whatever it may be. Also within that, it has automated purchase orders. So once the design side, because with Materio, it has like the scope side and the order side.
So the design team goes in, they add in all of the items once they've approved it, and they said, like, our client is good to go, it automatically generates the PO for us. So we have all of the relevant details and then we can go in and manage, add in the tracking, things like that.
It allows us to add in the tracking link, something I'm hoping to see in the future. It's like I know we weren't going too much into AI, but like Alcove, I haven't done a lot with them but they had a really nice feature that was similar to Shop, which would take the tracking link and automatically provide updates.
So I think when we're looking at the future of interior design, when we have products like from Williams, Sonoma, Serena and Lilly, all of those retail stores that provide us like those FedEx UPS tracking numbers, then nobody really like your client doesn't want you spending a lot of time tracking those because they could track that.
Like they don't want you spending a lot of your time, our time there. So I think the more we can lean into those automatic updates, that's a really awesome opportunity. So like I said, we don't use that system currently, but that is something that we're always trying to like push toward.
But like I said, we lean a lot into automations to group information, create reports and in general have information put into one place in a project management system and then figure out within that system how we can divide that into multiple views.
So then that's viewable for each department because the designer needs to see different things on the procurement company or procurement side done, the finance side done, the design assistant. So what our practice is and with a client that we're working with right now in ClickUp is how do we get all of the information that we need to see to make sure the product is getting where it needs to go and how do we distill that into information that they need to see day to day when they're checking in on their projects.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: 100. And if we come back again to the fact that the majority of design firms are either solo or very small teams where people are wearing many different hats and have no spare time to figure out these automations, it becomes kind of a a problem that you know that you should be doing this because it's going to save you time, it's going to save you money, it's going to save you grief, it's going to make your clients happy, you're going to make you more money.
But who has the time to figure all this stuff out? So, obviously, if I have got the money in my pocket, I'll hire you to do that for me. And I've always been a big believer of it's better to pay for someone's knowledge. Then if it's going to take you so many hours to figure this out yourself, why are you doing that?
Right, Exactly. And I think AI is definitely going to play a role in that in the future. I'm obsessed with it. And like everybody else, when AI became a thing, we all started playing with image generators and chatbots, and.
And now we can already see after, you know, a very short amount of time, that that's probably how it's not going to end up working for business owners. It's going to be software companies like the ones you just referenced who are going to weave AI into their products and just make it simpler for the solo designer to use that, because they won't need the same learning curve.
Once the AI has been trained well enough on customer data, and you'll be. It'll be able to ask you a series of questions and you'll be able to plug in your particular business information, and it should be able to start doing more things for us.
But I'm wondering, have you put any thoughts into that where you see AI potentially disrupting what you do?
Brittanie Elms - My Design Assistant: Yeah, I mean, there's certainly a. You know, there's always that question, right?
Like, where it's like, okay, this is pretty good. Like, where is my value? Where? How am I gonna hold up against this? But I think with AI, what's. Or at least my view of it is it's taking away some of the mundane.
Like I said, nobody wants us tracking West Elm stuff. That's not the purpose. And I'm only picking on West Elm because I did orders for them recently. But they already have the tracking automated, Right. Like, they have a tracking link. It's already getting updates.
So, yeah, right now we have to manually track that. But that's not ideal. We don't want to spend our time there where it's really critical for us to spend time. And I think we were talking about this briefly before. The call is looking at things that are like, how do we move this industry forward?
What are the things that we're seeing happening? Like a lot of those retail stores providing free design services. Well, who likes free? People who aren't looking for an individualized design. Right. Like the person who's like, ooh, okay, you have free services, and I'm totally okay with buying all my stuff from one location.
They don't really care about having an individualized design. They care about somebody coming into their house and being like, oh, this looks nice. And they're like, yeah, thanks, I did it myself. You know, like kind of that DIY er. But when we're looking at what is future proof, what is moving this forward, it's knowing your community, knowing having the inside knowledge of the resources and our role in that is helping to facilitate that and keeping that going.
And that human to human connection isn't something that you can AI. So there's elements of it that are going to make it a lot easier because this way we're not wasting time on silly, you know, click to click to click to click type things moving through pages.
Okay, now we have the information and we can actually act and do something on it. So there's still going to be the people who are needing to problem solve when we just got 33 yards of fabric that were not in good condition. So now we have to facilitate that return, get the new fabric, make sure our timelines are all lined up.
AI can help us maybe catch some details in that. But the facilitation we still are largely going to have to do, there's still the communication with those vendors, the relationship building, the appreciation for their business and vice versa. Like that stuff is still very human. Right.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Like you mentioned how when you needed to have a big company adapt specifically to your very specific problem about the fabric, the discontinued fabric. Right. And they weren't able to do that because they've got such codified rigid systems which work on one level for the scale of that kind of business.
And isn't AI that exactly the same thing? Right. It's got a system of rules that it's going to follow one way or the other. So what happens when we present it with something unique? How does it adapt? Right. And maybe 50 years from now this isn't a problem.
But I always come back to the, the idea of, of the concept of garbage in, garbage out and your specific knowledge of working with designers and their suppliers and how to get product A from factory to the client's home.
It's, it's niche information. Right. I can't Google, I can't go online right now and ask Google or ask OpenAI Chat GPT to do what you do specifically. It'll give me a vague kind of general answer. And until we can train an AI model on your brain and your employees brains and get that very specific information, you can't automate that away.
Brittanie Elms - My Design Assistant: Right. It's. It's very niche. Right. And I think, you know, it's great for providing a framework. You can use it in some ways to, like, analyze information. I think it's looking at the things that you never have time to do or, you know, getting ideas, creating a marketing plan.
Like, there's definitely a value to it, but you still have to input your knowledge. Right. Like, anytime I've used. Well, I use chat GPT honestly, very often. Like, I'm a big fan because one, I type really fast and I am like the queen of typos.
So all my stuff goes into chat dvd, and I'm like, make this not typoed. But at the end of the day, like I said, you still have to put in your knowledge. You still have to direct it, you still have to coach it. You still. It's. It can create things. Like you said, if it's creating everything, it's always super generic.
A lot of times it's still wrong. There's, like, inaccuracies. So at this point, you're still very much a part of it. It's a framework, for sure.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: That's all I've got for my giant list of questions, and I guarantee in half an hour I'm going to think of something else and wish I'd asked it to you. So maybe is there anything that you wanted to get across to designers that I haven't thought of to ask you?
Brittanie Elms - My Design Assistant: Yeah, I mean, I think at the end of the day, like, what we're here to do, as I had expressed early in the call, is we just want people to feel excited about their business, know that there's different levels of help.
The level of help is not always hiring. Of course we would love for you to hire us. But then also at the end of the day, like, sometimes that's not the right move for you. And there's different ways to investigate what is the move for you to take right now. And so if somebody wants to hop on a discovery call just to decide, discuss that.
And we can kind of figure out, like, do any of our services work? Do none of the services work? Do you need to go a completely different direction? Totally fine. We just want to make sure that people feel kind of one of our values is empowered like, that they feel good about it, they feel motivated, that they see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Because I think a lot of us are working in our homes away from the public. I know a lot of times people aren't really networking directly with their design community, because that can feel competitive. And then you start to create these ideas that aren't necessarily true.
An idea of how something needs to be done, an idea of how you do it, an idea of how you're perceived with your particular design skills or setup. So, yeah, there's a lot of different ways to do things. Typically, the answer is the simpler that you can do it, the better and the more repeatable.
And we're a big fan of really boring, repeatable businesses that allow you to do big, exciting things.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, that's fantastic. I've got a couple of designer friends who are solo designers, and they are wedded to the fact that they do everything.
And I specifically set up this interview with you for them, and hopefully we convince them, and whether they hire you or not, we'll. We'll see. But I've learned a lot today, and so I really appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much.
Brittanie Elms - My Design Assistant: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, my pleasure. Talk to you again soon.
Brittanie Elms - My Design Assistant: Thank you. Bye.
Douglas Robb - Interior DesignHer: Okay, bye.
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