To-The-Trade S3E28 Marcy Sagel Built Designer Bank to Teach What School Didn't

Marcy Sagel, CEO of MSA Interiors and Designer Bank in Baltimore, has spent 25-plus years building a commercial design practice focused on multifamily, affordable housing, senior living, and student housing, alongside a smaller, personal residential practice. Her conversation with Laurie Laizure centers on one idea: know your numbers before anyone else in the room does.Sagel built Designer Bank, a course platform launching with 13 courses (35 within its first year and a half), after noticing that most design school graduates arrive without Revit training her large architectural partners already require. The courses run from Revit fundamentals through Enscape rendering, because visualization, she says, is what actually gets clients emotionally attached enough to say yes.That same instinct for closing a gap shows up in her approach to commercial interiors. Rather than default to sterile, repetitive commercial finishes, she carves out lounges, cafes, and gaming areas that feel residential, an approach Laurie dubs "resommercial." The goal is not more spending. It is making sure people feel proud of the building regardless of price point.On budgeting, Sagel pushes back hard on the idea that asking a client's budget upfront is manipulative. A budget range, she argues, is simply where two sides start communicating what they actually want, and it is not optional on large commercial jobs, where clients are funded years in advance with no room to ask for more later.She is equally direct about specifying versus purchasing: her firm specifies more than ten million dollars a year in materials her clients never realize she is choosing, from decorative lighting to paint to flooring underlayment. Her signature story: scratching a client's wood floor sample with his own key to prove it was the wrong choice for a high-traffic event space, then sourcing a commercially rated floor for less money than he was already planning to spend.On running the business, Sagel credits delegating to a VP of Operations she trained by bringing her to every client meeting, and credits her entrepreneurs' organization membership for the accountability a CEO does not otherwise get.The episode closes on two points IDC's audience will recognize. Asked if new designers should market themselves before they have projects, Sagel's answer is yes: market who you are as a person. And Laurie names something rampant in the industry, imposter syndrome, pointing out that no contractor waits to get published in a magazine before calling himself a contractor.