To-The-Trade with Interior Design Community

Brooklyn-based interiors, architecture, and hospitality photographer Regan Wood joins Laurie Laizure and Nile Johnson to talk about the part of the design business that most designers pay for and least understand.Regan came to photography as a second career, moving from womenswear designto dog photography to interiors, which she has shot since 2013. She seesphotography as an opaque trade in the same way design is: people work aloneand learn by trial and error. The most common friction point is cost.Because everyone has a camera in their pocket, professional rates surprisepeople, and her advice is to bake photography into the project cost fromthe beginning rather than scrambling for the money at the end. When Nileasks about contacting a photographer at project kickoff to get a number forthe proposal, she says yes, with a buffer for rate increases over a longbuild.On permissions, Regan urges designers to put photography in the agreementand to raise it with homeowners early, so a no does not arrive eighteenmonths in. Nile describes handling it as a matter-of-fact step repeatedacross the investment guide, welcome guide, and a separate permissionssheet. On rights, Regan explains that a photographer can legally license animage commercially, but a property release from the homeowner is required,and retouching a designer's specified products out of a shot is bad form.For designers chasing press, she offers a reality check. Magazines areflooded with submissions, and who took the photos may get an email openedfaster but will not change the answer. Editors decide on the project, thehomeowner, the designer, the art, and the styling, and the most commonrejection notes are that a space does not feel lived in or needs betterart. She points designers toward regional and niche titles where seriouslocal homeowners are already looking.The practical half covers DIY shots for designers who cannot hire yet(natural light only, lights off, tight details and vignettes, skip the wideshots), pre-production, shot list discipline at fifteen to twenty shots aday, shooting opposite the light with a compass and an assistant, mixing inverticals for social and editorial, and bringing five times more floralsthan expected. She also shares her shared-shoot rules after one painful daywith an architect and designer both on set, and makes the case thatstorytelling, not documentation, is what actually wins designers more work.

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.

Yvonne Christensen didn't plan to build a design partnership. She and her now business partner, Nicole (Nikki), ran separate solo practices for about ten years before an organic collaboration on a Parade of Homes project, taken on while Yvonne was expecting a baby, turned into a full merger three years later. Nearly six years in, Christensen walks through how they structured the partnership to last: merged furniture buying power and joint accounts from the start, separate billing for hours worked in the early years, and a operating agreement they revisit regularly as their roles shift.A year ago they brought on a business coach who typically works with CEOs, meeting weekly for three hours. He's helped them build an organizational chart and forced overdue conversations about financials and communication. Christensen says the biggest surprise wasn't the partnership itself but how much back-end work employees created.The conversation gets specific on pricing. The firm bills hourly for design work until plans go to engineering, then flat fee once square footage is set, reverting to hourly past 18 months. Christensen spends about ninety minutes consulting clients and calls their builder directly to clarify documentation expectations before quoting. Furniture requires full payment before ordering and a second retainer before staging, so clients rarely face a surprise bill at project close.Consistent builder relationships are, in her words, key to staffing and profitability, since repeat work with the same builders cuts the learning curve on subcontractors and allowances. She also shares that furniture and design fees carry comparable profit margins percentage-wise, though furniture produces higher total dollars, and margins vary by builder based on how much oversight a project requires.This year the firm opted out of Parade of Homes for the first time in ten years, taking a deliberate break after years of tight, high-pressure timelines, even though the parade has historically driven strong long-term referrals. Looking forward, Christensen and Nikki are pursuing product licensing, and Yvonne recently joined the Moen Design Council through an organic industry connection. The episode wraps with a few personal notes: her favorite spaces to design are libraries and additional sitting rooms, her belief that a house should always feel personal, and a favorite project on a ranch property in Kanab, Utah, where a client's handful of found rocks set the entire material palette.

Jaclyn Isaac, an interior designer at Donnie Douglas Designs, built Nest Freight, a new freight-and-receiving platform for the trade, after two costly wake-up calls. While seven months pregnant and managing a high-end install in Fort Lee, New Jersey, she discovered her receiver had left boxes unopened for months, resulting in thousands of dollars in damage and a ruined client experience. Separately, a $900 freight quote for $6,000 worth of hand-carved Italian marble tile came back at $3,000 when it was time to actually ship. A friend with a logistics background, now her co-founder, got the same shipment delivered for $541.That gap between quoted and actual freight cost is the core problem Nest Freight solves. Jaclyn says her team sees average savings of $150 to $200 every time they requote a shipment, and the long-term goal is to use collective industry volume to negotiate better group rates directly with carriers.Nest Freight soft launched in March with almost no marketing. Jaclyn's original goal was 100 signed-up firms; the platform is at about 21 so far, entirely through word of mouth. She and Laurie discuss why adoption has been slower than the savings would suggest: most designers have never thought to requote their own freight, and getting a second quote feels like extra work on top of an already full plate.The company has expanded into receiving in New Jersey, Southern California and San Diego, and Florida, matching where most of its current users are based. Jaclyn is direct about what makes receiving hard to get right: pricing transparency, since designers routinely get surprise invoices weeks after delivery, and inspection quality, since a generic warehouse may not catch the kind of damage a designer would flag on a high-end piece. She shares an example of spotting small tears in leather on a studio chair that a standard receiver likely would have missed.The conversation also covers insurance gaps most designers do not consider until something goes wrong, including freight carriers' low default liability caps and receivers not insuring items in storage on a designer's behalf. Jaclyn and Laurie both recommend using AI to review vendor contracts and identify actual liabilities before signing.Jaclyn is offering IDC listeners a discount through Nest Freight, code IDC2026, for one free month.

Christie Leu spent fifteen years as a self-employed fine craft artist before a contractor called her a serial redecorator and asked her to help style his clients' homes. That request became Christie Leu Interiors, now in its 13th year serving Maryland, Northern Virginia, Washington D.C., and the Eastern Shore.Leu traces her business instincts back to age fifteen, when she noticed she was earning about $100 an hour making pottery at night and $1 an hour babysitting during the day. That early awareness of her own value still drives how she prices today: $300 an hour for herself, $110 an hour for her assistant, $150 an hour for drafters. Her take on flat fee pricing is direct. Skipping hour tracking because you charge a flat fee is how designers lose money without realizing it.Much of the conversation with Laurie Laizure and Nile Johnson traces how directly her art background feeds her design work, from color memory to composition to balancing an off-center fireplace, plus a formative tax seminar at 23 that taught her to read her own numbers from day one.One of the episode's sharpest stories involves a lighting vendor whose polished pitch on lumens and product specs never answered the question Leu actually needed answered: what's the payoff for the designer, and how do I explain the value to my client? She pushed back hard, and the larger lesson holds: vendors chasing designer referrals need to speak to the designer's business reality, not just the product's features.Leu also unpacks a client's comment questioning an email line item on her invoice. Her answer: about 80 percent of her time goes to email, coordinating contractors, tradespeople, vendors, and warehouses so that a twenty-component window treatment order stays on schedule. Actual designing is closer to 8 percent of the job.She closes with a peer group she helped start, built on a business-of-design foundation and still meeting monthly with outside experts, plus a quick lightning round: kitchens and baths are her favorite rooms, gray is the trend she's ready to retire, and murals and window treatments are the splurges she always defends.

Karen Laos learned to negotiate at six, when her dad handed her a few dollars at a flea market and told her to have fun but never pay full price. Twenty-five years into a communication career, she joins Laurie Laizure to talk about the part designers struggle with most: what to say in the seconds after you name your price.Karen has coached at NASA, Google, and other large brands. She left corporate in 2019 to help 10 million women overcome self-doubt and communicate with confidence in 10 years, and she is about halfway there. The turning point was a boardroom where she could not get the words out. Her boss shut down the meeting, then told her she could have simply tabled it. Karen's takeaway was not embarrassment. It was a question: why do I keep asking for permission?The most quotable moment in the episode is a negotiation she ran from a loading dock. An HR contact asked her rate, she gave it, and the line went quiet. Karen let the silence sit, then asked How does that land with you. The answer was that she was significantly higher than other coaches under consideration. Karen said, I recognize that I'm higher than most. Is that a deal breaker? It was not.She also walks through a recent decision to hold a new speaking minimum, turning down $3,500 and a paid trip rather than negotiate against her own word. Within days she met someone on a plane and opened a six-figure conversation. Her framing: your rate is a decision, not a feeling you wait to have. The scary part is the trapeze gap between letting go of one bar and catching the next.Laurie brings it back to design economics. Reverse-engineer the number from salary, rent, overhead, insurance, and retirement, and unprofitable projects stop being emotional decisions. She also raises the scenario designers fight most: a client reverse-images a chair and finds it cheaper online. Karen's answer is to handle it proactively by deciding what you are available for and setting the parameters at the start of the engagement, rather than defending them mid-project.The lightning round delivers the practical layer. The sentences to practice: that doesn't work for me, and I'm not available for that. The word to retire: sorry. The credibility leaks: I think, maybe, kind of, does that make sense. And the cheapest improvement available to anyone, which is recording yourself on a client call and listening back.

You get maybe twenty good photos of a finished install in a year. There are 365 days in the year. What fills the rest? Most designers cycle the same images or go quiet, while the thing clients actually want to see- the process and the reasoning and the real cost- never leaves the designer's head.Shannon Ggem hit that wall for ten years. She posted three times a week and earned roughly one new follower every three months, most of them people she met face to face at trade shows. Then she agreed to be the private case study for a new content system from Laurie Laizure at Interior Design Community. This To-The-Trade conversation is the thirty-day debrief.The first fix was not strategic. Laurie told Shannon to drop the filters, and the numbers moved immediately. In a feed increasingly full of AI-generated talking heads, looking like an actual person is now an advantage.The second fix was scripting, which Shannon resisted hard. Being told to be authentic and then handed a script feels contradictory. The comparison changed her mind: scripted videos are cleaner, shorter, and free of her natural repetition. The workflow is practical. Build the script from your own talking points, edit it in Notes until it sounds like you, paste it into the teleprompter in Edits, record one paragraph at a time, delete bad takes as you go, and curate your photos before you open the app.Shannon's most useful admission is about the times she reverted to her old habits. Those posts took longer and performed worse. Her top two videos in the whole feed were made with no makeup, in pajamas, in about ten minutes.The back half widens out. Laurie tracks what featuring a brand does for that brand, which is fifty new followers at minimum and sometimes 250, and makes the case for naming makers out loud so handcrafted work becomes desirable instead of anonymous. Shannon talks about posting on drawings, a topic she assumed nobody wanted, and finding that clients rebuilding after the fires very much did. Both push toward publishing real timelines and cost ranges alongside the satisfying before and after reels.There is also a good stretch on emotional resistance, which for Shannon disguised itself as a file management problem and nearly killed a post about her first career as a scream queen. That post was a hit.The month ended at 158,800 views and 990 new followers, plus a licensing conversation, a referral, and two paid brand collaborations. IDC is opening the process up to the full community.

Susan Jamieson founded Bridget Berry Designs, a Richmond, Virginia-based design firm named after her rescue dogs rather than herself, a branding choice she made so the business could grow and change hands independent of her own name. Over 35 years, she's built the firm into a home store, a paint line, a wallpaper line, and most recently a self-published book.Susan's move into design happened by chance. She started college aiming to become a stockbroker, then fell in love with the field while sitting in on her mother's renovation meetings with an architect and designer. She switched paths and never looked back.The paint and wallpaper lines both grew out of the same problem: she could never find the exact color or pattern she needed, so she started making her own. She encourages designers to support smaller, designer-led product lines because they offer flexibility larger brands can't, including custom colors and scaling.Her new book, Bridget Berry Color Rules, expanded from a blog into 70 rules on color theory, inspiration, and practical application, aimed at homeowners but also useful as a refresher for designers. She self-published to control pricing and margin, printing through a manufacturer in China.Susan and Laurie talk through AI's limits in design work, agreeing that AI struggles with scale and can't replace the judgment and delivery work designers provide. Susan walks through her client process, including a New York condo project for repeat clients whose usual traditional style doesn't match their new space.Asked about her biggest business mistake, Susan points to overstaffing early in her career and the payroll and tax burden that came with it. She's since scaled her design team down to three people. Her pricing has evolved from purely hourly to a mix of hourly site visit billing and flat project fees with built-in time limits, since client indecision, not design work, tends to drive delays.The episode wraps with a quick round on Susan's personal preferences and a look at what's next, including a new fabric line and a booth at High Point featuring the book, wallpaper, and new lampshade designs.

Laurie Laizure and Nile Johnson talk with Tara Kelley, founder of TJK Bookkeeping and a longtime friend of Laurie's, about one of the biggest struggles in the design industry: financial clarity. Tara built her career in corporate finance before starting her own firm, where she now works with several interior design clients.The conversation covers why most designers never feel like they have a firm handle on their numbers, especially without dedicated support. Tara explains the value of working with a bookkeeper who specializes in design, since industry-specific knowledge helps her spot red flags, benchmark margins, and guide better decisions around marketing and staffing.The group discusses the monthly P&L as Tara's go-to report, and why so many designers don't know what a P&L even is, largely because design software doesn't present financials in a useful way. They talk through profitability by product category, using appliances (low margin) versus cabinetry, tile, and upholstery (higher margin) as examples, and make the case for breaking revenue into visual, granular buckets so designers can see where their profit really comes from.Tara shares that nearly all of her recurring clients came to her with messy books, and most engagements start with a cleanup project. Nile highlights how important that honesty is, since fear of judgment keeps many designers from getting help in the first place. Tara reassures listeners that she never judges, she just gets things cleaned up.The episode also touches on bigger financial decisions, like investing in show houses, marketing events, and trade shows like High Point Market, and how these decisions often carry an emotional weight that can cloud good business judgment.Tara closes with two pieces of advice for designers at any stage: keep personal and business finances completely separate, and reconcile accounts every month to catch errors before they compound. The conversation ends with a discussion of pricing models (hourly, flat fee, and project-based) and how each affects a designer's ability to track and protect their profit.

Laurie Laizure talks with Morgan Finley of Morgan and Hatch Design about the reel series that put Morgan on Laurie's radar, "Who's Gonna Clean That," and what it revealed about why designers should show more of the real, unfiltered version of their work.Morgan explains how a single viral video, a fluted marble hood nobody wants to clean, drove roughly 3,000 new followers and kept compounding as shares and saves pushed it through the algorithm. Laurie adds a tip: repost a viral video again after about ten days, since it typically performs just as well.The two dig into the industry's core communication problem. Laurie cites a recent poll where 95 percent of designers said the public doesn't understand their value, and both agree that's the industry's job to fix. Laurie's definition of the work: designers make the plan, then hold everyone, including the client, to it, catching problems like a crooked tile or a beautiful but impossible-to-clean finish before they become regrets.Morgan shares her own shift from an aspirational content persona to a relatable one, and how showing her real, builder-grade home, instead of hiding it, made her content connect. They talk through simple production tools (background eliminators, CapCut, clean sound) and Morgan's advice to always include a "why me" statement so viewers know what makes a designer worth following.Money comes up often. Post-pandemic pricing shifts, tariffs, and supply chain issues have changed costs significantly, and both agree a big part of the job is walking clients through what things actually cost. Morgan notes that budget size doesn't predict a good client relationship. What matters is whether the client values the designer's judgment.They also discuss why designers rarely support each other publicly compared to fields like photography, and agree the real competition is homeowners who never learn a better option exists, not other designers.Morgan describes cross-promoting with contractors and subcontractors, and Laurie shares ideas for local, client-relevant content that also builds goodwill with nearby businesses. They swap examples of practical, budget-conscious fixes, such as updating cabinet hardware instead of replacing custom cabinets and honing stone countertops instead of tearing them out, to show that good design advice is often about smart choices, not expensive onesLaurie closes with a simple starting point: a clear bio with contact information, plus three pinned videos, an introduction, a company overview, and a project showcase, and mentions Interior Design Community's upcoming content challenge with free scripts and images for designers ready to start posting.

Chris Laumer-Giddens joins Laurie Laizure to talk about building science, the study of why homes fail and how to build them so they last for generations instead of twenty years. Chris works with his wife, Jody, who has owned LG Squared since 2006; he joined in 2012 after specializing in indoor air quality, rot, mold, and thermal failures. LG Squared handles architecture, interiors, and mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and structural design under one roof.His clearest rule: "Foam is a four-letter word." The firm avoids spray foam and other toxic, plastic-based materials entirely, building instead with natural materials and traditional joinery. Chris has seen a client collapse from spray-foam fumes on-site and has replaced mechanical systems damaged by off-gassing. His real point is that improper installation, not any single material, is what causes most building failures.Much of the problem, he says, comes from builders and architects who simply do not know what they do not know, often working from bad information that circulates as trade wisdom. He encourages designers and architects to ask questions without embarrassment, the same way architecture licensing exams teach you to find answers rather than memorize them.That gap led Chris to get his GC license, and he eventually built about half a dozen homes, including a five-million-dollar off-grid homestead. He now often works as an owner's agent, vetting builders and catching costly mistakes before clients buy or build.Pricing gets concrete. LG Squared's billable rate runs $350 to $500 an hour, padded roughly 30 percent for follow-up time, and wealthier clients tend to prefer a fixed lump sum over hourly billing. The firm now charges $2,500 for an initial two-hour site visit, down from offering it free, after giving away too many high-value ideas.Chris also shares a sobering legal story. A $7,000 liability cap meant nothing when a lawsuit landed on LG Squared, and the firm ended up roughly $200,000 out of pocket because the builder did not defend them as promised. He and Jody have weathered two lawsuits and real PTSD from the experience.The two also discuss running a firm together as spouses, working through early ego friction, and how Chris's YouTube content, which Jody avoids, became the firm's biggest source of trust-based, design-build clients. The episode closes with a tour of the couple's new apartment in a chateau in southwest France.

Jameelah Watkins-Mallett, founder of Lauren Wesley Designs and creator of the CASE Collective conference, talks with Laurie Laizure and Nile Johnson about trust between designers, real talk about money, and the path that took her from doing hair at twelve years old to running a thriving design and events business.The conversation opens with a candid look at why designers hide their best work online, often out of fear of judgment from other designers rather than clients. That leads into a story about a breach of trust within a private community, where a comment in a group chat made its way back to a client. Jameelah and Laurie compare notes on the ground rules that keep community spaces safe, including zero tolerance for fraud and strict confidentiality.Jameelah shares her career story: years in bridal hair and events with business partner Ebony, the referral that became her first interior project, a feature on Martha Stewart's blog, and the pandemic pivot that pushed her fully into interiors. Her first full year in business brought seven projects, almost entirely through word of mouth. She also describes the early luck of working with a contractor who ran his job site like clockwork, a level of professionalism she later realized was rare in the industry.A large portion of the episode covers the CASE Collective conference, which Jameelah built to address underrepresentation in design. She talks through adjusting her messaging after learning some designers felt excluded by a conference designed to be inclusive, and the group discusses what it means to build community spaces around shared experience, whether that experience is rooted in race, geography, or access. The conversation also touches on how rural and urban designers face very different barriers to finding clients with design budgets.The episode also tackles money directly. Jameelah and Laurie push back against the industry's discomfort with discussing pricing, profit margins, and paying yourself, and Jameelah notes that even a modest conference budget can run close to six figures. She shares a coaching example about helping a designer in a rural market find the right neighborhoods to target.The group wraps with a discussion of content creation, weighing direct, education-first social content against rage-bait trends that can alienate potential clients, followed by a lightning round and details on the CASE Conference, happening October 1 through 3 in Atlanta.

Sharon Sherman of Thyme and Place Design has 40-plus years of experience across interior design and kitchen and bath, and that dual perspective gives her an unusually clear view of what's broken among designers, showrooms, and brands, and what actually works.The episode digs into a gap that's been widening since COVID. Clients are changing. Showrooms are closing. Brands that want the designer market often don't understand what that market actually needs. Sharon is direct: brands spend heavily on events and PR that completely miss designers, then blame the design community for being unsupportive. What designers want, she says, is to be welcomed and inspired, not sold to. They want solutions that improve projects and make businesses more profitable.She illustrates the dysfunction with a personal story. She visited a company's showroom repeatedly over several years before placing her first $45,000 order. Her rep never once reached out. The rep finally appeared after multiple large orders had already been placed. The showroom had benefited from her loyalty. The brand had no relationship with her at all.Her own approach is intentional. About 25 accounts across furniture, flooring, wall covering, and accessories, not a hundred. Deep relationships that go both ways: her showroom contacts know her well enough to advise her clients in her absence, and to tell her when a material won't work before she specifies it. She credits those relationships with saving her from costly mistakes, from wrong seaming placement on countertops to finding the right specialized installer for a gym floor.The "dinner plate" analogy she offers is one of the episode's most practical frameworks. Large vendors for core products, local showrooms for regional sourcing, and one or two specialty partners for the pieces that matter most. Managing that mix on purpose, rather than by default, is a business decision.On direct purchasing, her view is nuanced. Better margins are real, but only if the infrastructure supports it: receiving relationships, purchase volume that makes the brand care, and the capacity to absorb what goes wrong. For many solo designers, the showroom relationship is the more profitable choice once all the hidden costs are factored in.She closes with a prediction: the industry is dividing into conveyor belt design and what she calls painterly design. One fills spaces efficiently. The other curates them intentionally. The right clients, the right vendors, and the right relationships will determine which side of that divide each designer ends up on.

Jenny York, VP of Marketing at Currey & Company, joins Laurie for a conversation about what it actually takes to build a brand that designers want to work with.Currey is approaching its 40th anniversary as a second-generation family-owned business, now led by founder Robert and Suzy Currey's son Brownlee. That independence shapes everything, including creative risk-taking, the decision to hold real inventory, and the culture of high-touch relationship-building that makes their showrooms feel like a reunion every market week.Jenny brings nearly 30 years of experience in the home furnishings industry to her role, including 20 years in editorial, covering trade shows, market centers, and the rise of designers as a major distribution channel. That history gives her a different lens. She saw firsthand which companies made the shift to being designer-friendly and which didn't, and she watched Currey become an early adopter of that change.Some of the most practical takeaways in the conversation: being genuinely designer-friendly means restructuring your warehouse, customer service, and sales team, not just hanging a welcome sign. It means valuing the small orders, not just tolerating them. And it means being honest that some people on your team won't make that cultural shift, and being willing to act on that.What makes a designer stand out to a brand like Currey? Coming to market in person always matters. But the tip Laurie and Jenny return to is simpler: photograph your finished project, own your copyright, and share those images directly with the manufacturers who made it. Currey can't shoot thousands of products in real homes. When a designer shares installation images and does so freely, that's genuine brand partnership, and it tends to pay off in relationships that hold up when things go wrong.On the industry at large: Jenny sees a real shift toward quality and away from fast furniture, AI has a place in analytics and projections but not in Currey's creative voice, and the consolidation of trade shows means every in-person interaction counts more than it used to.Currey is expanding carefully into adjacent product categories, most recently cordless lighting and bath vanities, with a new addition coming this fall. They'll be in Atlanta, Dallas, and Las Vegas this summer.

Kimberly Kerl is an architect and designer based in South Carolina with thirty years of experience, and her episode with Laurie and Nile covers a lot of ground: client process, billing, trends, and an honest read on where the market is right now. She starts with video. Kimberly has been documenting a live renovation at her own home, posting unscripted walk-throughs from the job site multiple times a week. Her audience is hooked. The value, she says, is in closing the knowledge gap. Clients have no idea what a pocket door actually involves until they see the framing and the electrical relocation happen in real time. Video makes that visible and, eventually, makes billing conversations easier. Her intake process is tight. Every inquiry gets a free 15-minute discovery call, followed by a paid on-site consultation ($375 to $600) where she requires both decision-makers to be present. She's evaluating communication styles, priorities, and who the real decision-maker is, all before she writes a single word of a proposal. The proposal arrives within one to two days, ties directly to her contract, and breaks the project into four phases with clear fees attached to each. She doesn't collect a retainer and has never been burned doing it that way. A recurring theme in her work is the renovate vs. move question. Clients come to her undecided, and with today's interest rates, the math often favors staying put. She helps them work through it, and most do continue forward. Multi-generational living is also driving more projects, with adult children back home and aging parents needing accommodation. Kimberly designs proactively for privacy, acoustics, and flexibility even when clients aren't thinking about it yet. On trends, outdoor living is fully mature in South Carolina. She's installing dishwashers, ice makers, retractable screens, and layered lighting in spaces that function year-round. Health and wellness is the next wave, with saunas showing up at every trade show and home gyms becoming genuinely well-designed spaces. Smart home tech is valuable when it works quietly in the background, and a good integrator makes all the difference. The market has slowed. Inquiries are down, contractors are calling her rather than the other way around, and clients are cautious. Kimberly sees it as a market correction after an unusually long run, not a reason to panic. It's cyclical, and it always has been.

Tracee Murphy has spent 26 years in luxury residential design, runs her firm Trademark Interiors, and teaches designers and brands how to leverage psychology for a competitive edge through her platform, The Designer Launch. Her title, The Design Biz Therapist, is not a metaphor. She believes the gap between a struggling design business and a thriving one often has nothing to do with talent, portfolio, or pricing and everything to do with emotional intelligence.The conversation starts where Tracee says every project should start: with the designer. Before reading a client, you have to be able to read yourself. That means knowing your triggers, recognizing when your emotions are shaping your decisions, and building the self-awareness to pause before you react. No system, no contract, and no questionnaire does its job without it.On the client side, Tracee has developed a lifestyle questionnaire that serves a dual purpose. On the surface, it collects project information. Underneath, the answers reveal how a client makes decisions, how much control they want, how they handle problems, and what they need to feel confident in a process they do not fully understand. Tracee feeds those answers into AI to build a psychological profile, then uses that profile to calibrate how her team communicates, not to reinvent her process, but to tailor her language. A control-oriented client might get more specific updates. A hands-off client gets the same template with less added. The process stays the same. The communication flexes.That consistency matters because trust is not built in a first meeting. It is built through leadership. Tracee talks about what happens when a designer lets a client take the wheel, from choosing tiles together in a showroom to absorbing last-minute changes from an absent partner who never signed off on anything. In her firm, all decision makers are required to attend every meeting. If someone new comes in six months later wanting to change direction, the conversation is clear: here is what that costs, here is how it changes the timeline, and it is your call.The business results are real. Over five years of intentionally implementing emotional intelligence practices, Tracee's firm's profits doubled. She also had a heart attack at 48 during a client presentation. The two facts are connected. The boundary work is not just about money. It is about staying in this industry long enough to do great work.The Designer Launch offers courses on the psychology of interior design, conflict management, and selling luxury. Follow Tracee at @thedesignbiztherapist on Instagram and visit thedesignerlaunch.com to learn more.

Eric Dillman started in interior design school, moved into sales and digital marketing, and now works directly with designers to help them show up consistently on social media and stop waiting for the perfect moment to post. In this conversation with Laurie Laizure and Nile Johnson, he gets into what designers should prioritize, how to stay consistent when life gets hard, and how to finally get on camera.On platforms, Instagram remains the primary play for most designers. It's visual, it's where clients are, and Meta rewards native posting. LinkedIn is useful for brand and manufacturer relationships, not client leads. YouTube Shorts is quietly building, and Laurie notes that YouTube feeds AI search in ways worth paying attention to. The simplest strategy is to find one platform where you can perform well and automate distribution to the rest.On content: designers are sitting in a content goldmine and don't know it. The mistake is thinking in terms of final outcomes— the reveal, the finished room. Clients want the process. They want to know who's in their house, why you made the choices you made, and what goes into a recommendation they might have taken for granted. Tag your brands. Document your decisions. That context is something no influencer can fake, because they weren't on the job.On consistency: batch your content. Eric records podcast episodes months ahead and coaches designers to keep a running camera roll of unposted content so that when a hard week hits, the feed keeps going. Laurie adds that reposting something from six months ago is completely fair—most people won't remember, and the ones who do will just say it was a good one.On-camera fear: Nile admits he has the ring light and the mic and still doesn't use them. Eric didn't show his face on his own profile for two years. His starting point: a tight one-minute script, built with AI, run through a panel of AI critics to strengthen it before you record. Use Instagram's free Edits app for teleprompter, green screen, and clip-by-clip recording. Flub a sentence, delete that clip, move on. Post it, then put your phone down. Your biggest supporters will be strangers who connect with your work -- not your inner circle.The episode closes with an idea Laurie and Eric are both clearly excited about: a challenge to get 10,000 interior designers making videos, using shared scripts and a common hashtag.

Rhobin DelaCruz has been designing for over 18 years, but he didn't attend High Point Market until about 2.5 years ago. The turning point was business coaching, specifically understanding that designers who build direct vendor relationships and sell to their clients themselves can capture 20 to 100 percent profit on goods, compared to the 10 to 20 percent that comes from sending someone to a retailer. That math made the trip worth taking.In this episode of To-The-Trade, Rhobin talks with Laurie Laizure and Nile Johnson about how his approach to the market has evolved with each visit. His first was about observation. His second was intentional: meet the right people, make a lasting impression, and leave market with contacts who would remember his name. That shift in strategy set off a chain of relationships that has shaped his business in ways he didn't see coming.This spring, Rhobin is a High Point Market Style Spotter. He's leading a Saturday tour focused on just two showrooms, Classic Home and Sunpan, and plans to highlight the campus's outer areas that most attendees skip. His practical navigation advice: download the app, group your visits by building, and wear broken-in shoes. Fashion is a real thing at High Point, but the market day calls for comfort first.Some of his best advice is the bigger picture: go in with a strategy, but stay open to who you meet. That's how the Design Besties came together. Rhobin met Whitney Atkinson, Laurie Johnson, and Nikki Watson at the VRD Summit, and the four bonded on a group showroom tour at his second market. He started a group text after the trip. Two years later, they're in daily contact and serve as each other's informal board of advisors.From that group came the Teachers Lounge Movement, now a 501C3 nonprofit. When Nikki suggested designing a teacher's lounge for a local school instead of her own backyard, the group immediately said yes. The emotional reveal from that first project changed the trajectory of all four designers' work. Their High Point collaboration with High Point by Design brought in over 20 brands and more than $50,000 in donated furniture.The episode also covers how visibility in this industry is actually earned, why follow-up is the skill most designers undervalue, and why the path to becoming a Style Spotter or panel guest has nothing to do with paying to play.Rhobin's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rhobindelacruzdesigns/Website: https://rhobindelacruz.com/

Houston designer Juliana Ewer has been going to High Point Market almost every year since 2018. In this episode of To-The-Trade, she and host Laurie Laizure make the practical, financial, and professional case for why market attendance matters not as a perk, but as a real competitive edge.The conversation starts where Juliana always starts: product knowledge. You can't do a sit test online. When a client says they want a firmer seat or a fabric that holds up to daily family life, the designer who has been in the showroom and sat in the chair already knows what to recommend. Laurie adds that the market also helps you spot saturation. She walks through the boucle moment, when every showroom in the same year had the same off-white fabric, and experienced designers immediately clocked that it was already over. You only see that pattern from a bird's eye view.The quality difference between trade-only and retail brands is clear. If the general public knows a store by name, the company has spent a lot of money on marketing rather than on materials. The brands at High Point that don't run national campaigns typically reinvest that budget into the product. Juliana illustrates this with a vendor who, months after delivery, identified a frame issue from a single photograph and coordinated a full pickup and rework around her client's schedule, including a family wedding. That level of service is what protects a designer's reputation when something goes wrong.Practical market tips run throughout the episode: comfortable shoes, leave the laptop at home, let vendors mail the catalogs, and plan your showroom route around the education sessions. The 313 Space gets a recommendation for its natural light and boutique vendors. The Antique and Design Center at Market Square opens a day early on Thursday, and things move fast. Hooker's outdoor deck is the reset button when the day gets overwhelming.Juliana leads Insider Tours for High Point Market Authority and is leading a Hotspot Tour this year as part of the StyleSpotter program. She came to market for the first time as a new designer in 2018, went to every education session she could find, and met a stranger on the shuttle who became a lasting friend. The market is where relationships are built with vendors and other designers, and sometimes with the version of your business you didn't know you were building.

Jill Erwin started her interior design business in 2006, survived the recession, and recently hit the 20-year mark with a rebrand: Just Jill Home. She joined Laurie and Nile on To-The-Trade to discuss what it actually takes to get to the point where you charge what you are worth and stay there. Pricing was the throughline. Jill has spent years attending industry panels where designers reference rates without ever naming a number. Her take: just say it. Based on the market data Laurie shared, designers at the 20-year mark are operating in the $250 to $300 per hour range, with major metro markets pushing considerably higher. Jill confirmed she is moving toward $250 in Richmond and is clear-eyed about why: that is what her experience is worth. To give clients a lower-risk entry point, Jill developed two introductory service tiers she calls Quick and Fast (2.5 hours) and Short and Sweet (5 hours). Both were designed to let her assess a client's and a project's fit before moving into a full contract. If the dynamic feels off, she has a structured way out. If it feels right, she moves forward. The contract itself has evolved over 20 years, adding photography rights, scope protections, and other clauses she learned to include the hard way. Design philosophy came through in the specifics. She described a multigenerational family room near the Chesapeake Bay where she fit seven individual seats, a sofa, and a round leather ottoman into a cohesive plan, each piece chosen for how a specific family member actually uses the room. She also talked through a repeat client who came back after 15 years as an empty nester. Jill designed a custom coffee station with navy cabinetry and a bistro table, built around how the client now starts her mornings. The broader conversation circled back to the same point Jill has spent 20 years learning: designers who undercharge are not just hurting themselves. They are giving away equity that belongs in their own businesses and households. The client benefits. The designer absorbs the cost. Jill's new website, Just Jill Home, launches May 1, 2026. She can be found on Instagram at [@justjillhome](https://www.instagram.com/justjillhome/).

Maria Khouri grew up in Beirut during Lebanon's 15-year civil war, moving 12 times in 10 years. She has spent her career making homes in San Francisco that feel like exactly that: home. Her boutique firm handles high-end residential work across the US and into Europe, and her commercial clients hire her for the same reason her residential clients do. They want spaces that feel personal.In this episode, Maria walks through the elements that define her practice. Every project includes one piece made by a Lebanese artisan, a signature Easter egg that connects her two countries and opens clients' eyes to artists and art forms they have never encountered. Her onboarding process relies on a 20-slide visual presentation that shows clients exactly what working with her entails, from mood boards to reveal day. She credits this tool with a measurable improvement in her closing rate.The pricing conversation is one of the most honest in recent memory. Maria charges $300/hour in San Francisco and argues that even flat-fee designers should know their effective hourly rate. Without that math, she says, you are likely leaving money on the table and will not know why. Nile and Laurie weigh in from their own experience, and the tension is productive. There are real reasons to charge both ways. The key is knowing what you are actually earning.The highlight of the episode is the story about the Hermes scarf. A Los Altos Hills client asked Maria to translate a framed Hermes scarf into a foyer floor. The result was a custom marble mosaic featuring 25 different stone colors, designed in collaboration with an Italian artisan who flew his team to California for the installation. The client still talks about it.Maria also shares how she uses AI for renderings and elevations without compromising her design process or her clients' IP. She is thoughtful about what she will and will not give a platform access to, and that carefulness is a lesson for any firm. Trust your gut on clients, she says. The same goes for the tools you let into your business.Quick-fire round: bouclé is overused, invest in antiques, wallpaper never gets old, and please pay attention to your outlets and plugs.Visit Maria at [mariakhouri.com](https://www.mariakhouri.com/) and follow her work on Instagram at [@mariakinteriors](https://www.instagram.com/mariakinteriors/).

Kelly Collier-Clark of House of Clark Interiors came to interior design after nearly 20 years in corporate America, a real estate license, and a full life lived before she ever took her first design client. When House Beautiful named her a Next Wave Designer, she found out at a restaurant and cried in the bathroom. It was earned.In this conversation with Laurie Laizure and Nile Johnson, Kelly gets into the real work behind confidence, the business logic behind marketing strategy, and why pricing clarity is a professional responsibility, not just a personal choice.On confidence: Kelly is direct. She did the work. Temple University's design program. Paid mentorship. Years of corporate experience in rooms where she was often the only woman and the only Black woman. The confidence she brought to design didn't come out of nowhere. And her message to newer designers is consistent: faith without works is dead. Show up, do the work, and the confidence follows.On strategy: Laurie opens with a marketing story about a small bikini brand that infiltrated a celebrity's inner circle before going directly to the celebrity. Kelly connects it to the sphere-of-influence principles from her real estate training. Know your ideal client. Know where they spend time. Be in those rooms. She's moved intentionally to LinkedIn because that's where her former corporate colleagues, the professionals with real budgets, are spending time.On showing up as yourself: Kelly's best content advice is also her clearest. Clients are doing research before they ever reach out. They're watching your stories. She's had new clients mention her honeymoon location in the first consultation. That level of trust doesn't come from AI-generated captions. It comes from consistently showing up and being authentic over time.On pricing: No designer should charge less than $100/hour. Kelly takes it further: lowballing doesn't just hurt the individual designer. It sets a market standard that affects everyone. New designers especially need to hear this. Running a project doesn't get easier just because you're newer. If anything, it's harder. Charge accordingly.The conversation also covers the "free design" offered by big-box retailers, why it's furniture sales, not design, and how smart designers can use quality comparisons as direct content to attract the right clients.Find Kelly at House of Clark Interiors and on Instagram @kellycollierclark.

Laura Hildebrandt of Interiors by LH joins Laurie Laizure to share how she built a thriving interior design business in the DC area after a divorce left her a single mom of three with no work history or industry background. Starting with home staging in 2013 using furniture from her own house, Laura taught herself design at night, funded her early business on credit cards, and gradually transitioned into full-service interior design.The conversation covers Laura's pricing journey from $75/hour to her current rate of $250, with plans to raise it again. Laurie reinforces that no designer should be under $100 an hour and shares a cautionary story about a builder who tried to pay a designer less than minimum wage for full design services on $5 million homes.Laura walks through her client process: a free 15-minute phone call, a $600 two-hour in-home consultation, and an in-person contract review. She reports a 95% close rate and typically walks out with a signed contract and retainer the same day. Her 15-page contract covers everything from communication expectations to liability protections.Boundaries are a major theme. Laura does not text clients, keeps firm phone hours (9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.), and gives herself 48 hours to respond to email, all of which are written into her contract. Both Laura and Laurie discuss how women in the industry are often pressured to undervalue their work, whether through lowball builder offers, "carrot opportunities" that never materialize, or clients who try to deduct losses from design fees.Laura warns designers never to run subcontractors through their business without a GC license and stresses the importance of collecting fees before final installation. The episode closes with a strong message about work-life balance: exhausting yourself does not produce better work, clients will not remember your sacrifices, and the beauty of owning your business is getting to decide how you live your life.

Ann Feldstein, founder of Moxie Marketing and a 25-year veteran of the interior design industry, joins Laurie Laizure and Nile Johnson to discuss why women supporting women is one of the most practical business strategies designers can adopt.Ann's research-backed work on internalized misogyny explores how women unknowingly project societal biases onto each other, from judgment about appearance and life choices to reluctance to share pricing, proposals, and resources with competitors. She traces these patterns to early messaging, fairy tales built on female rivalry, impossible body standards, and a culture that penalizes women for being too direct or too confident.Laurie shares the example of Shelly Hudson's text group of 15 direct competitors who share everything from pricing to wallpaper installers. The result: stronger systems, higher prices, and better businesses across the board. The takeaway is that transparency between competitors is not a threat. It is a growth strategy.Ann draws on her experience as a CrossFit coach to illustrate the confidence gap. She consistently told women to add more weight to the bar because they underestimated themselves. Men almost always had to be told to take weight off. That same dynamic plays out in how designers price, present, and advocate for themselves.Nile adds that everything he learned about business came from women and urges the industry to acknowledge and honor what women bring to the trade. The conversation also examines how men can be better advocates, the AD100 gender imbalance, the "manel" phenomenon, the mental load women carry, and what happens when husbands join successful design businesses and try to restructure what was already working.Laurie announces plans to write personal recognition letters to 10 designers a month and highlights IDC's 15% profit challenge as a way for designers to strengthen their businesses together. Ann closes with a clear message: every opportunity to elevate another woman in the trade benefits the entire industry.

This episode of To-The-Trade is brought to you by AJ Madison Pro, the industry's trusted appliance resource for interior design professionals. Recorded live on the floor of KBIS 2026, this special episode of To-The-Trade brings together high-end designer Nikki Levy and Jenny York, VP of Marketing for Currey & Company, for a candid conversation about what it actually takes to build lasting designer-brand relationships.Nikki runs a South Florida firm with 12 employees, 30 active projects, and $50 million in annual specifying dollars. She is direct about what she expects from brands: live people who answer phones, clean returns, MAP pricing that is actually enforced, and reps who function as educators rather than catalog-delivery services. Jenny explains how Currey & Company has built its designer-first reputation over 37 years, including 48-hour shipping, no minimums, no credit card surcharges, and freight calculators available before checkout.The conversation covers bad rep stories that cost brands six figures in lost business, what designers can do to build goodwill with brands they love, freight billing fragmentation and how to protect yourself, brand storytelling as a client sales tool, and why lighting should never be specced last. For designers looking to strengthen their vendor relationships, and for brands trying to understand what designers actually need, this is a rare conversation where both sides are in the same room and being honest.

PJ Delaye spent 26 years at York Wall Coverings, rising from export director to president of North America's largest wallpaper manufacturer. In this episode of To-The-Trade, he joins Laurie to discuss the wall covering industry's dramatic comeback and why designers should pay close attention.PJ compares today's wall covering landscape to the craft beer revolution. Digital printing has lowered the barrier to entry, and smaller studios are creating bold, personality-driven patterns that major manufacturers might never have attempted. Coupled with a cultural shift away from minimalism toward maximalist, character-rich interiors, wallpaper is firmly back in the mainstream.For designers, PJ makes a clear business case. Wall coverings typically offer a 20 to 40 percent designer discount, providing significantly higher margins than paint. They also serve as portfolio builders and referral generators, because a striking wallpaper pattern prompts the "who's your designer" question in a way paint simply can't.The conversation also covers practical aspects. PJ explains why non-woven backing has become the industry standard for quality wallpaper. Non-woven products are dimensionally stable, allow paste-the-wall installation, enable precise seam matching, and can be removed in full strips. He and Laurie contrast this with peel-and-stick, which helped reintroduce consumers to wallpaper but requires overlapping seams and can split as vinyl shifts with temperature changes.PJ also introduces his new company, Veer Decor, which curates wallpaper from multiple European mills and studios to offer designers a broad, exclusive portfolio. Laurie concludes with ThinkLab data, estimating the North American wall covering market at nearly $12 billion annually, reinforcing that this is a category designers should not overlook.

Heather Cleveland (Heather Cleveland Design, Bay Area) joins Laurie Laizure and Nile Johnson to unpack what truly differentiates a successful design firm: process. While talent is everywhere, Heather argues that a refined, repeatable client experience is what wins trust, reduces anxiety, and drives referrals.Heather shares her creative upbringing and her career pivot after a tech layoff, then explains how a role running IKEA’s kitchen department became an unexpected technical bootcamp that strengthened her kitchen and bath expertise. From there, she built a whole-home practice while keeping her first love, textiles and materials, at the center of her creativity.The core of the episode is Heather’s system for “spoon-feeding” clients what they need before they ever have to ask. She outlines a clear sequence of touchpoints from inquiry through onboarding and project milestones, plus personalized gestures that feel thoughtful without resorting to branded swag. Her biggest game-changer is the weekly Friday client email: a consistent update on what happened, what didn’t go right (paired with a solution in progress), and what’s next. That cadence prevents weekend worry spirals and dramatically reduces client check-ins because clients trust the update will come. Laurie connects this to profitability and value communication, noting that proactive communication can prevent the “guilt discounting” cycle many designers fall into.They also dig into the tough part of every project: ending it well. Heather explains how she sets expectations early by telling clients a story about something that went wrong and how it was resolved, so bumps feel normal rather than catastrophic. At the finish, her firm delivers a detailed project “binder,” now digital, built from Programa, including product specs by room, images to clarify what’s what, and manufacturer care guides. This gives clients confidence they’re not being abandoned after the punch list, and it becomes a valuable asset for resale and future maintenance.The episode closes with a focus on learning and innovation: Heather prefers workshops (IDS, Haven Workshop) for actionable ROI, and she shares practical AI uses, such as generating presentation cover sketches from a home photo and creating virtual walkthroughs from photorealistic renderings.

In this To-The-Trade episode, Laurie Laizure interviews Phil Hotarek, a plumbing/HVAC contractor and decorative showroom owner in San Francisco who also leads the Decorative Plumbing & Hardware Association (DPHA). Phil explains DPHA’s role in connecting brands, independent reps, and showrooms through a hotel-based showcase that prioritizes time, access, and real conversation, along with education and ongoing resources to better support designers and specifiers.Laurie highlights DPHA’s roundtable model as a standout: manufacturers, reps, showroom owners, and designers in the same room with a moderator, topics submitted in advance, and a private environment where people can talk honestly about real problems. They reference conversations around tariffs and the shifting economy, and Phil shares that DPHA built this structure by listening closely to annual survey feedback and expanding interactive programming, including webinars, because members wanted more meaningful engagement than passive booth traffic.The episode turns practical quickly. On pricing volatility, they discuss transparency strategies, including how tariffs might be presented to clients, and Phil emphasizes that surprises erode trust. He encourages a more decisive selection phase when pricing can change rapidly. They also discuss growing pressure on manufacturers to be clearer about where products are truly made versus assembled, because that detail matters for both credibility and storytelling.On follow-up and relationship-building, Laurie notes designers’ inbox overload and suggests tactics that respect time and bandwidth: QR codes instead of stacks of lookbooks, sensible sampling (often one per firm), and social-media DMs that continue the conversation after the show. They also explore the importance of product stories that help designers explain value to clients and position boutique decorative brands as intentional choices rather than commodities.Phil closes with a growth goal: reaching 100 designer attendees at the 2026 showcase in Salt Lake City. Laurie shares outreach strategies that could help achieve it.

In this episode, Marsha Sefcik talks with Laurie Laizure and Nile Johnson about building a design business that supports the season of life you’re in, rather than forcing yourself into someone else’s “right way.” Marsha shares her journey from corporate sales, training, customer service, and project management to nearly two decades in design, all while raising kids alongside her business. She emphasizes giving yourself grace and modeling problem-solving and professionalism for your family, even when things feel messy.On the business side, Marsha offers very practical guidance. She recommends starting with a “reverse engineer” approach: clarify the net income you need, then work backward into project minimums, services, and pricing decisions. She also explains why time tracking matters—even if you charge a flat fee or a hybrid—because you can’t accurately audit past projects or identify the “chaos leaks” in your process if you don’t know where the hours are going.Marsha shares a real project example where a client’s decision bottleneck (tile selection) stalled momentum, tying it back to setting expectations around options, approvals, and limiting revisions. Laurie highlights how quickly revisions can divert a project from its original vision, and why tightening the approval process protects both design integrity and profitability.They also discuss “shiny object” tech stack creep, with Marsha recommending regular subscription audits and cutting tools you’re not using. From there, the conversation shifts to marketing and pipeline building: relationships matter, newsletters are a missed opportunity for referral-driven designers, and marketing should be viewed as a strategy with ROI, not just random effort. Marsha outlines four marketing pillars: attract, engage, nurture past clients, and delight them.Finally, they explore boundaries and sales. Marsha redefines upselling as education and service, encourages designers to follow up on proposals, and shares how proactive weekly client updates can reduce frantic weekend texts and keep projects moving smoothly.

Laurie Laizure interviews Boston-based designer Dane Austin about building a design career with intention, focusing on community, and anchoring projects in comfort and quality. Dane shares that he has known he wanted to be an interior designer since childhood, inspired by his grandparents’ stylish, welcoming home. He steadily pursued that path, earning two degrees over 10 years while working in retail, fashion, and hospitality—experiences that shaped both his taste and his client-service mindset.A key theme is the importance of professional community. Dane shares how he moved from DC to Boston and rebuilt his network by joining organizations, attending events, and volunteering, not just to “get” connections, but to contribute. He advises designers to try groups more than once before deciding they aren’t a good fit, and to focus on one or two organizations at a time to keep involvement manageable.The episode also examines pricing realities and how fee inconsistency affects the industry. Laurie points out that undercharging can be a significant issue for newer designers who lack mentorship and benchmarks. Dane adds that in more transparent designer communities, established professionals often charge much higher hourly rates, which can be eye-opening for designers still determining their prices.From there, the conversation shifts to client education about product quality. Laurie and Dane discuss value engineering in mass-market furniture and why marketing-focused brands can signal internal material compromises. They explain the “designer filter,” which narrows down thousands of options to just a few, based on comfort, durability, maker reliability, lead times, and whether pieces can be repaired or reupholstered. Dane’s main principle is that comfort is the ultimate luxury, and he encourages clients to invest in what they touch and use every day, especially custom upholstery and window treatments.Dane also shares a practical purchasing strategy: build strong relationships with a few trusted showrooms and vendors. Focusing spending enhances support when problems occur and simplifies sourcing. Finally, he redefines what great design provides; it’s not just the final appearance but also the quality of daily life through better lighting, sound, flow, and usability. His process focuses on how clients want to feel in a space, then guides them through decisions as a trusted advisor.

In the last episode of 2025 the To-The-Trade podcast from the Interior Design Community, hosts Laurie Laizure and Nile Johnson get real about what it takes to support design pros, and where the business of interior design is heading next. Laurie opens by thanking Nile for the behind-the-scenes work that goes into the show, from guest vetting to shaping questions that actually serve working designers.A big theme is advocacy, and specifically, trust. Laurie shares that a primary focus going into 2026 is helping more people “know and trust” designers because trust is what converts into clients. She also calls out the role manufacturers can play by investing in design business education and marketing support so that designers can sell with more confidence and product backing.They also talk about money in a grounded way. Laurie references an ASID jobs report showing higher average salaries than in past years, but stresses that even improved averages can still fall short of a living wage in many of the markets where designers work. That leads into a larger point, the industry needs more respect, better compensation, and stronger collaboration across trades, vendors, brands, contractors, and clients.One practical concern they raise is the volatility of health insurance costs. Laurie flags that changes to Affordable Care Act subsidies could impact self-employed designers, with some estimating that costs could jump dramatically, putting real pressure on small design businesses. Nile adds that insurance costs can still feel unpredictable, especially when it comes to emergency care pricing.From there, the conversation gets very tactical about how designers can protect revenue and increase project value without burning clients out. They dig into why clients sometimes skip an accessories package at the end, often it is budget anxiety and decision fatigue after months of choices. One solution, phase it. Build in follow-ups at 6 to 9 months to revisit adjacent spaces, accessories, or even the exterior plan once the client has recovered mentally and financially.They offer a clever visual sales tactic, too, using AI photo editing to show clients “with vs without” accessories and art, so the finishing touches are no longer abstract. When clients can literally see what disappears when they cut accessories, it becomes easier to justify the full scope.Then Laurie delivers a decisive “ROI” mindset shift: designers are building equity in clients’ homes. She suggests creating an investment guide using an Excel list of past projects, comparing home values from project start to today, and using that data to talk about how your work increases net worth. That confidence is key when clients ask for discounts, because the equity upside goes into their pocket, not yours.Finally, they zoom out to community culture, learning, and leadership. They talk about embracing imperfection, asking questions like 'markup vs. margin,' and sharing failures so newer designers do not have to spend a decade figuring everything out alone. Laurie and Nile close with a holiday send-off and a big announcement, Nile will serve as a Style Squad ambassador for Design Edge as the podcast heads into its third season.

In this To-The-Trade podcast episode, host Laurie Laizure interviews Montreal-based interior designer Romina Tina Fontana of Fontana & Company about how her background in marketing and graphic design influences her approach to running her studio. After nearly twenty years in advertising, working with major agencies and brands, Romina shifted into interior design by photographing her own home and friends’ houses. A behind-the-scenes Instagram story caught the attention of HGTV editors, who featured her Victorian “bachelorette pad,” helping to launch her interior design career.Romina discusses how she treats her business like a brand, using a consistent palette of yellows and greens and a custom illustration in her logo. She depends on a detailed ten-phase process document that reflects her services agreement. Whenever she has allowed a client to pressure her into skipping or changing a phase, problems have resulted, so she now safeguards that structure and improves it after each project. She has even added a specification phase to emphasize the technical details involved in choosing fixtures and fittings.A significant theme is photography as a strategic business tool. Drawing on her advertising experience, Romina budgets for professional images on nearly every project, sometimes waiting for the right season to show a home at its best. She collaborates with trusted photographers and editorial stylists, like Me and Mo in Toronto, to create vertical vignettes that work for magazines. One Rosedale project styled and shot this way was later published, clearly showing a return on her marketing investment. Her advice to designers is to set aside photo funds from the start and invest in experienced stylists, especially early in their careers.The conversation also covers collaboration with trades, the peer community, and client communication. Romina loves her trades, invites their expertise, and even uses a “love your trades” hashtag. She shares how a London trip with Christopher Farr Cloth turned into an ongoing WhatsApp support group for twenty-five designers, where they talk candidly about billing and custom work. On the client side, she runs Monday and Friday status meetings and sends Friday updates, often by audio message, so clients head into the weekend feeling informed.Finally, Romina and Laurie emphasize the importance of insurance. Romina maintains a binder of coverage for herself and every trade on major projects, while Laurie advises designers and their virtual assistants to carefully consider liability and business structure, especially when managing procurement. It offers a grounded perspective on the business side of interior design, combining creativity with real-world risk management.

In this To-The-Trade podcast episode, Laurie Laizure and Nile Johnson interview DC-based designer Isy Jackson, founder of Chelt Interiors, about British-inspired homes, antiques, and sustainable business habits for design pros.Isy explains how her creative roots in the UK, from a fashion sketching Nana to parents who flipped houses and a stepfather in high-end tiling and crystal, taught her to see both structure and beauty in interiors. She describes her style as layered and lived-in, with patina, books, and dogs that make spaces feel welcoming rather than staged.The conversation dives into antiques and sourcing strategies. Before suggesting changes, Isy tours a client’s home to identify what is truly sentimental and must stay. Only then does she bring in estate sales, Georgetown shops, and auction houses like Sloan and Kenyon, Weschler’s, and Quinns, always setting a maximum budget and aiming to bid around half the low estimate. Hence, clients get value without losing control in the auction rush.Holiday decorating shows up as both joy and revenue. Isy and Laurie talk about how seasonal installs can take over one to two months. Still, once decor comes down, clients suddenly see bare rooms and are ready for the next project, making holidays an innovative moment for designers to drive marketing and retention.On money and client transparency, Isy walks through her pricing strategies for designers who want to maintain high trust. She currently bills hourly with frequent invoices so clients always know where they stand, then splits the margin on trade discounts to show how much she saves them below retail. She also uses a room-by-room budget spreadsheet and an investment guide with low, medium, and high ranges, which helps clients understand realistic spending and prioritize investments.Finally, the group tackles overwhelm and boundaries. Laurie describes the cure for overwhelm as true “nothingness,” a reminder that creative energy needs rest, especially during holiday crunch season. Isy shares how communication, personality awareness, and a service mindset help her navigate client and trade conflicts without burning out. The result is an interior designer tips-packed episode on client management for designers who love antiques, history, and thoughtful homes.

In this episode of the To-The-Trade interior design podcast, host Laurie Laizure welcomes Los Angeles-based designer and Kitchen Design Innovator of the Year, Shannon Ggem. Shannon shares how her bi-coastal practice blends New England sensibilities, antiques, and California ease, and how she uses biophilic or dopamine-driven design to connect people to nature and the makers behind their homes.Laurie and Shannon dive deep into empathy as a core business skill in interior design. Shannon explains how highly sensitive, empathic designers can almost read a client’s mind, and why that is both a gift and a trap. She walks through the specific language she uses in client management for designers, such as telling clients they cannot hurt her feelings and having couples rank choices on a scale to make decisions clearer and faster.The conversation shifts into pricing strategies for designers and the fear many clients have around being “sold to.” Laurie pushes back on the big box narrative that designers are expensive middlemen, contrasting it with heavily marketed, value-engineered retail. Shannon opens up about her responsibility to vet factories, materials, and human rights, and why she refuses to sell low-quality products that will fail and damage trust.They also tackle overdelivery, shaving hours, and how constant unpaid emotional labor leads to burnout and resentment. Real stories about showing 167 sconces, clients chasing dupes and bargain antiques, and brands navigating tariffs all highlight why the designer’s professional filter matters. Shannon closes by calling designers to clean up their business practices, educate clients upfront on budgets and fees, extend empathy to vendors and trades, and protect their own boundaries so they can keep serving at a high level.

Designer and UA Designs founder Sarah Brohm joins Laurie Laizure on the To-The-Trade for real talk on process, pricing, and growth. Sarah’s nursing background shaped her bias for systems and client care, which shows up in selection trackers, job site codes, and contractor-first communication that keeps clients out of the weeds.The firm averages about 15 whole homes per year, aiming to have the design complete by framing walkthroughs, then rolling right into furnishings. Their flat design fee is based on estimated hours multiplied by the studio rate and includes two revisions, with extras billed as needed. Fit checks up front ensure budget alignment and trust.To guard margins, Sarah runs EOS and reviews invoicing, budgets, and profitability weekly. As expectations for CAD, SketchUp, Enscape, and Revit have grown, the team increases planned hours and runs periodic time studies so pricing stays honest.Client experience is formalized. UA Designs offers a certificate of completion and price transparency guarantees, prioritizing rapport and a finish-line mindset.The studio’s kitchens and cabinetry division reduces vendor fatigue and yields cohesive results by keeping a single visionary in charge of casework, finishes, and furnishings. Trade shows, lunch-and-learns, and monthly education keep the whole team sharp.On AI, Sarah says designers should use it more effectively, especially to sync changes across platforms and to eliminate redundant tasks, freeing up time for design. Looking forward, she wants fewer projects with deeper scope, ultra-dialed installs, a larger studio, and, eventually, an integrated design-build offering.

On this episode of the To-The-Trade interior design podcast, host Laurie Laizure and co-host Nile Johnson welcome SEO pioneer Ross Dunn for real talk on how search is shifting for the trade. Ross explains why he prefers “answer engine optimization,” and how AI overviews assemble responses by fanning out to multiple queries, which reshapes how content should be planned. Designers should build topical hubs that cover the real questions clients ask, not just pretty pictures.From the website basics, Ross and Laurie highlight common issues on design sites, such as missing service areas, thin project pages, and unlabeled images. They suggest including descriptive copy for each project, using meaningful file names, and adding human-readable alt text that benefits screen readers and search engines.For local SEO, Ross emphasizes hyperlocal proof, such as community sponsorships and charitable ties, that generate authentic mentions and links. Social mentions can be influential, but platforms with restricted access are unreliable signals. Reviews, including video reviews, are powerful tools for building trust in the interior design business.Operational must-dos for the episode include updating WordPress, maintaining 90-day rolling backups, testing contact forms monthly to prevent losing leads, and using Google Search Console since third-party rank reporting is now limited. GA4 should track conversions that represent genuine leads, not vanity metrics. For performance, Ross advises designers to use GTmetrix and emphasizes that speed keeps prospects engaged.He also promotes his new SEO Grok resource and reminds listeners of his long-running SEO 101 podcast for ongoing learning. Designers seeking sustainable visibility should continue publishing case-study style project pages, include genuine words, and build authority gradually.

This episode of the To-The-Trade highlights designer Dara Segbefia, principal of The Zen Experience, whose holistic interiors focus on mental health and wellbeing. Her specialty, transforming teacher lounges and school spaces, began with a project connected to her daughter, Zen, and a principal client. It expanded after teachers said they finally felt seen and respected in a space designed for them.Dara explains how improved staff energy influences students, transforming lounges into hubs that support relaxation, collaboration, and daily functioning, including small but important wins like adding a second microwave and planning for both introverts and extroverts.We also explore the interior design business. Laurie and Dara speak openly about pricing and safeguarding margins, including the idea of a 10 percent admin fee to cover unavoidable project friction, documentation, and supplies, so resentment doesn’t arise when profit diminishes.For client management, Dara shares the systems that keep her grounded, including a morning routine that avoids social media and email, skipping morning meetings, and aligning with clients who respect her boundaries. Community matters too, from designer meetups to accountability voice notes that lighten the load.The episode closes with real-world operations, featuring a project manager who handles logistics and time tracking, allowing Dara to stay in her creative lane. Additionally, a field story is shared that proves why humor is sometimes the only tool left when an installation goes sideways.Dara also shares a future goal: establishing a nonprofit arm to serve schools without budgets, because design dignity should not be dependent on zip code.

In this To-The-Trade podcast conversation, designer and former corporate marketer Rasheeda Gray explains how she transformed a light-bulb staging moment into a successful studio, Gray Space Interiors. Her home sold in three hours, transforming a long-time hobby into a clear pathway forward in 2016. Rasheeda spent three years building the firm at night while maintaining her day job, then exited corporate in 2019. She openly discusses burning through savings faster than expected and then pushing through the early pandemic to achieve one of her best years. The lesson is simple: perseverance and planning matter. Today, her team operates using systems such as a CRM with automated qualifiers, Design Files for boards and management, and QuickBooks for financial clarity. She monitors cash flow constantly and expects her team to be familiar with the numbers. Her offer ladder maintains steady revenue, with full-service options for larger projects and virtual design for clients with limited budgets. eDesign serves as a profit center that stabilizes cash flow. For client management, Rasheeda uses an intake questionnaire, a 15-minute screening, and will walk away during proposals if fit or process alignment isn’t present. Protecting the business and the team is a priority. Media presence is important but in a targeted way. TV appearances on HGTV, A&E, and Magnolia increased visibility, but local morning news segments are more effective for conversions. She actively pitches and dedicates roughly 20 to 25 percent of her time to marketing. Her parting advice to design professionals is to operate based on strategy. Plan the year and quarter, focus on what you love and delegate the rest, and hold yourself accountable with KPIs to enable course correction. 

On this episode of the To-The-Trade  podcast, Laurie Laizure and Nile Johnson sit down with Philadelphia-area independent rep and company owner, Jason Levy, who grew up in the trade through a Kravet family franchise and now blends residential and commercial support for designers. He positions himself as a solutionist, a rep who turns twenty conversations into one, sourcing options fast, handling specs, stock, codes, and finishes so designers stay in the profitable part of the project.Speed and availability are Jason’s edge. He answers after hours, which once landed a Saturday emergency call that grew into a career-defining, multi-scope project. He aims to be known as the fastest rep alive, using technology and solid CRM habits to keep designers moving.Jason also meets designers where they are, literally and digitally. Rather than over-visiting during a busy summer, he invested in humorous video content with a pro videographer to connect with emerging designers while staying valuable to seasoned pros, showing new programs like a domestically made, quick-turn machine-tufted rug line.The conversation addresses industry consolidation, the customer experience, and how effective communication, empathy, and product knowledge foster trust. Jason urges representatives to thoroughly research firms and project types, then provide precise, code-smart solutions, whether for hospitality, healthcare, or senior living. Forecasting, he says, starts with watching what firms publish and remembering preferences at the designer level.A heartfelt moment: Jason’s outlook was shaped by his late mother, a beloved rep whose clients became family, and by a hospitality mindset inspired by “unreasonable” service. Takeaways for the business of interior design, client management for designers, and operations, all anchored in getting answers fast and caring deeply.

Beth Dotolo and Carolina V. Gentry of Pulp Design Studios explain how they manage a firm across Dallas and Seattle, sharing goals, standardized processes, and similar revenue profiles. Their rule of thumb for hiring is straightforward: when leadership spends too much time on high-value design work, they hire or reassign to ensure the right people handle the right tasks. They prioritize investing in team compensation and career paths to maintain their culture and output.Their main theme is building wealth beyond just fees. Instead of spending on flashy things, Pulp invests surplus funds into assets, like purchasing their Dallas building and a Palm Springs property they renovated into an Airbnb. The focus is on long-term stability, not quick fame. The showhouse segment also provides a creative perspective, where constraints led to memorable design features, such as a secret door and a moody lounge, which generated industry buzz and new business.Decision-making is structured. Beth tends to approve, Carolina assesses feasibility, and both rely on documented five- to fifteen-year plans with a strategist. Operationally, the team is comfortable working remotely, using cloud-based systems and simple communication tools so both offices can support each other during workload spikes. The episode offers interior designer tips on partnership, pricing strategy, resource planning, and marketing through action, not just posting.

Filmmaker Jude Charles joins the To-The-Trade podcast to explain how docuseries content helps designers sell the real value of their work. Instead of chasing a viral post, he urges designers to create a human, long-form story that shows process, judgment, and personality, so clients start with trust. His journey began with a three-part series for a Pompano Beach designer who needed more than portfolio photos to explain his team’s value, and it accelerated after a project with LuAnn that highlighted a deep appetite for narrative in our field.The strategy is simple: let prospects meet you before they actually meet you. Include the docuseries in your inquiry and consult the flow. This approach shortens the time to a positive response and smooths projects because clients already understand how you think and lead. Jude’s three rules of authentic storytelling—lived experience, emotion, and evidence keep the content honest and persuasive. He demonstrates this by sharing his own burnout and recovery story, including a parking lot emergency that redefined his identity beyond work.A notable example is builder Brad Leavitt. Even with a solid platform, Brad needed to understand how a docuseries fit into his business. The series begins with his Father’s Day stroke, a human moment that garners attention and empathy before highlighting the work. Laurie notes that design is a high-stress, high-stakes service, and a docuseries can prepare clients to be patient when schedules slip, which helps with better client management for designers.

Design pros, this is your playbook for integrating technology into the experience and the business of interior design. Katye McGregor Bennett explains why the integrator, your behind-the-walls systems partner, belongs at the table before drywall. That early involvement lets lighting, audio, networking, and security serve the design vision, and it keeps you out of tech support. Pair with a proper service plan and remote monitoring, and the integrator handles issues while you lead the relationship.Start every project with the network, the home’s digital foundation, then layer categories like motorized shades and high-performance displays. A solid network reduces glitches, supports heavy use when the household is active, and future-proofs for growth. Watch power quality too; a stressed grid can cause flicker and crashes, and an integrator can diagnose and stabilize.Lean on the Home Technology Association’s Integrator Finder, assessment form, and budget calculator to vet partners and start transparent, experience-focused conversations with clients. Test tech at home or in your studio to build language and confidence, then position it as part of wellness, aging in place, and daily joy.Bottom line, curate two to four trusted integrators, align on aesthetics and communication, scope realistically with HTA tools, and let tech elevate the client’s lifestyle and your margins.

Laurie Laizure, Nile Johnson, and Phyllis Harbinger get practical about the business of interior design. Phyllis outlines her transparent purchasing model, where clients pay vendors directly, while her team manages the logistics. She charges a 35 percent cost-plus purchase management fee over net on everything. Her contract states she is not responsible for vendor malfeasance or damages, and if a replacement is needed, she manages it for the same fee.She avoids the term “retainer,” opting instead to collect a defined design fee at signing, a choice reinforced by legal guidance that “retainer” can require refunds if projects end early. She also protects IP and has clients initial every page.Day-to-day, Phyllis relies on daily team huddles, shared agendas, minutes, and Zoom recordings, which make approvals traceable and keep clients accountable. Design-wise, it is FFF, form follows function, with a deep understanding of how clients actually live and work.Expect mindset gems too, from positive expectation resets to a reality check on TV budgets versus trade economics

Host Laurie Laizure sits down with Lee Hershberg, founder of Design Edge, a traveling, invite-only trade event created exclusively for interior designers. Drawing on decades of experience with KBIS, High Point, and Las Vegas Market, Lee designed the event to close the gap between manufacturers and the many designers who can’t attend large markets.Design Edge is intentionally smaller and more focused, making it easier for designers to connect with senior brand leaders, exchange feedback, and find new products without the overwhelm of large show floors. The event features three parts: brand booths, a Maker Stage for product storytelling, and an Education Stage with sessions on contracts, luxury clients, and profit growth.Laurie and Lee highlight shifting from a “product” mindset to a “product partner” approach, fostering collaborative relationships where brands understand and support a designer’s unique needs. They share real-life examples of successes and failures, encouraging designers to come prepared to ask questions, provide feedback, and discuss what’s working and what’s not.With stops planned across the U.S., Design Edge offers a high-impact, low-cost way for designers to source smarter, partner better, and ultimately grow their businesses.

Episode 44 of To-The-Trade features Ariene Bethea of Dressing Rooms Interiors Studio in a lively chat with Laurie Laizure and Nile Johnson. Known for her fearless use of color, love of vintage, and warm personality, Ariene shares her winding journey from HR to interior design.She recalls the pivotal moment when redesigning her boss’s office revealed her passion for the trade, explaining why rigid design “rules” from school didn’t fit her style. After a stint at Bassett Furniture, she expanded her Etsy vintage shop into a retail store. While the shop attracted clients, not all shared her bold style, teaching her to only showcase the work she truly wants to do. They discuss client management, why “products lead to projects,” and why high-pressure sales tactics don’t belong in luxury design. Laurie and Nile encourage Ariene to consider writing a book that blends her maximalist aesthetic with a sustainable, anti-fast-furniture message. Ariene also previews her growing lampshade line and future lighting plans. The conversation is rich with business insights, design philosophy, and encouragement for creative entrepreneurs to stay true to their style.

Julie Sellers of @ellevatedoutcomes joins Laurie Laizure on the To-The-Trade podcast to talk about what really holds designers back from growing and how to fix it. From solopreneurs to firms with 25 employees, Julie shares why so many creatives become the bottleneck in their own business and what it takes to scale sustainably.With a team of high-level strategists—including CFOs, COOs, and legal experts—Elevated Outcomes helps design professionals move from feeling overwhelmed to being organized, using systems and strategies that align with their personal goals. They explore pricing strategies for designers, debunk the myth of passive income through accolades, and explain why profit is not the same as salary.This is a must-listen episode for any interior designer who aims to grow intelligently, not just extensively.

In this episode of the To-The-Trade podcast, Laurie Laizure chats with Jenny Warner, founder of J Thomas Designs, about her evolution from a hands-on childhood in construction to leading a profitable interior design firm with confidence and clarity.Jenny shares the pivotal moment she realized she was undervaluing her time, and how that realization helped shift her mindset around billing and profit. With 24 years of experience under her belt, she now advocates for designers to understand every layer of a project, from tile installation to taxes, and to never lose sight of their value.Jenny also reveals how she intentionally built her team, starting with a bookkeeper and later hiring part-time help that suits her business rhythm. Her leadership style blends flexibility with professionalism and includes thoughtful touches, such as spa rewards after intense installations.The conversation also touches on legacy planning and future growth. Jenny and Laurie explore how to refine your client pipeline, resist the temptation of vanity projects, and invest in the right kind of support for long-term success.This episode is packed with candid insights and practical strategies for design entrepreneurs navigating the business of interior design.

In this episode of To-The-Trade, Laurie and Nile are joined by Jenna Gaidusek, founder of eDesign Tribe and eDesign U, for a conversation about digital entrepreneurship in interior design. Jenna shares how her military lifestyle inspired her to build a location-independent design career and how she shifted from traditional interior design to creating a virtual design empire.Jenna explains how she built a strong online community and educational platform to help designers grow. She shares automation tools, tips for confidently pricing services, and her belief that designers should embrace authenticity and modern workflows. She also discusses integrating technology platforms like MyDoma to make the design process more efficient.The conversation is filled with honest insights about balancing creativity with entrepreneurship, building scalable systems, and redefining what success means. Jenna’s energy is practical, motivating, and rooted in real experience. Her message encourages designers to adopt new business models and craft a future on their own terms.

Rebecca Plumb and Shaun Crha of the Hot Young Designers Club join To-The-Trade to share how a chance meeting turned into a podcast that now supports a broad audience of interior designers. What started as a friendship and support system became a business during the pandemic, and they’ve navigated everything from burnout to business structures together.They reveal how their podcast grew from casual Zoom recordings into a platform that offers honest, unfiltered conversations. The pair emphasizes the importance of designers having a community, especially when working alone, and how their honest friendship helps others feel seen and understood.They also discuss the challenges of growing pains in monetization, hiring assistance, and managing client expectations. Audience feedback has been incredibly supportive, with many listeners crediting the show for helping them through burnout and business doubts. Topics such as setting boundaries, raising prices, and building confidence in business decisions are fan favorites.A notable segment focuses on the controversial topic of photo copyright and the inequity designers face with usage rights. The duo advocates for fair contracts and transparency. The episode highlights the significance of community, vulnerability, and treating design as a professional discipline.

Interior designer and HGTV alum Justin Q. Williams joins Laurie Laizure and Nile Johnson to discuss launching his design firm at 18, the power of social media, and building a personal brand. He shares insights into managing projects while filming on national TV, developing product lines, and fostering authentic relationships within the design community. Justin also discusses the impact of mentorship and his passion for design, which began in his childhood.