Starting a design company is no small feat. Often it is the result of years of financial planning, training or hard work serving a different client or a completely different industry. Becoming an entrepreneur feels like crossing a threshold—but for many business owners, it's neither the final nor the biggest leap they'll take in their career. This year on Trade stories Designers from across the country joined the podcast Home business Editor-in-Chief Kaitlin Petersen shared the major changes and upheavals they went through to create a company that aligned with their values and long-term goals.
Here, we've compiled some of the best insights designers shared on the podcast this year. If you're not already a listener, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to receive new episodes every other Wednesday.
Revision of the team structure
A few years ago, Amy Storm was stunned to discover that her company couldn't get out of the red despite a steady pipeline of projects. She enlisted the help of a business consultant to help her comprehensively redesign a team structure that had previously relied heavily on part-time support.
“Basically I said, 'Next year you all have to work full time or we're going to have to let you go and hire someone else,'” Storm says. “With that comes drama and sadness. …Not everyone wants to go in the same direction as you. Once I managed to not let it affect me so emotionally, we were able to intervene [the mindset of] “Let’s hire the right people for the job and change the way we do things.”
Trust your vision
Ali Budd's design career was almost over before it began. After college, she considered law school until a conversation with her family reminded her where her passion really lay. “My dad basically said to me, 'If you weren't afraid, what would you choose?' and I thought, 'I want to go to design school,'” Budd says.
Although she founded her own company a few years later, the process of finding her voice was not yet complete. When she gave herself the freedom to express herself freely on social media—and, more importantly, to stop comparing herself to other creatives—a world of possibilities opened up. Today, that artistic confidence has given Budd her own TV show, along with a team inspired to further her vision.
“I don't think people talk enough about how difficult it is to find your voice from a creative perspective [and] Be confident enough to use it,” she says. “The biggest thing for me was to stop trying to emulate other people and just focus on what my gut feeling tells me is good and right and then move on.”
Take a break
In 2022, Chloe Redmond Warner reached a breaking point. For almost two decades she had worked tirelessly to make her company a name – a successful attempt, but somehow running the company didn't get any easier. In desperate need of new energy, she planned a four-month break during which she enjoyed family time, a ski race, a trip to Egypt and a new gardening hobby. When she returned to work, she expected to get back into her routine; Instead, she saw her company with new eyes.
“My vision was that I would be super refreshed – and that didn't happen,” says Redmond Warner. “But then I saw the office and thought, 'Oh, you don't have to go back to doing things the way you did them.' It wasn't like I got a break from these things; It was so that I could change and grow [during that time off]. I’m not tired anymore, but that’s because I do things differently.”
Know your worth
Swathi Goorha's billing strategy started with a flat fee – until she realized that her team was often running out of time and investing far more in each project than their prices reflected. This experience solidified her decision to switch to time billing, allowed her to properly evaluate her services for the first time, and changed the way clients perceived the company's talent and capabilities.
“Because we [started] By billing for our time the way we should, customers have shown more respect for our time,” says Goorha. “Otherwise, people sometimes think our team members are their private assistants. I'm all for being friends with my customers: I get really close to them [them]“I know everything about their personal life, and then we go for a coffee and then dinner.” But when we work together, it’s important to maintain boundaries between customer and service provider.”
Decide when to delegate
The early years of Anissa Zajac's company were characterized by frequent employee fluctuations. After losing the company operations manager who helped her get her business off the ground, she didn't know how to find talent. After two failed retraining attempts that left her as a sole proprietor for some time, she realized she was looking for help in the wrong places. “I’m a terrible interviewer – it’s not my strong point,” she says. “I am a firm believer in staying on the same track and have now hired other people to assist me with the interview.”
Rethinking and refreshing goals
Within a few short years of starting his company, Brian Paquette had achieved almost everything he had dreamed of for his design company: a staff of 12, a retail store, and a growing profile in the Seattle design scene. However, as his company strived to keep up with its growth, Paquette became increasingly distant from the creative side of design, instead switching between meetings with team members as the company took on tasks he wasn't enthusiastic about to cover them overhead.
“I liked the idea of a brand with all these facets – the store, the lifestyle, the collections. You are a personality and you are everywhere,” he says. “[But] I quickly realized that my social battery was depleting very quickly. I can do all of these things, but the consequences of doing so aren't exactly the healthiest [for me].”
Paquette soon set about transforming his company to fit his new perspective. The process included exiting the business, downsizing to just one employee, and finally returning to day-to-day design work. It was the first wave of a series of decisions that he implemented in the years that followed. These ranged from changing his company's social media and marketing approach to devoting an entire year to renewing its systems. “Without all these systems, logistics and communications, 'pretty' means nothing. The pretty will have a flaw – and that flaw will be your lack of communication, an unanswered question and a customer feeling unsupported,” he says.
Diversify design offerings
Growth looks different for every designer—and for Kate Marker, it meant developing an entirely new kind of design business. Full-service design was the foundation of their business, but a new era in hospitality began with the purchase and renovation of a cottage in Michigan: the first in a series of vacation rentals where guests could get a taste of their style before they leave dared to jump.
A few years later, she added a third category to the mix: an e-commerce site called Kate Marker Home. The retail project began as a way for the designer to share her collection of vintage rugs with Instagram followers who coveted the unique pieces featured in her projects, and it soon became another entry point for potential clients as well as a furnishing source for her rentals.
“The three areas of my company really complement each other. Kate Marker Home allows me to expand my design experience beyond residential projects – my everyday, full-scale projects – while vacation properties serve as tangible examples of my work,” she says. “Guests may be interested in my design services or products after experiencing them [another] Part of my brand.”