a note from my desk....
There are certain things most of us have in common as interior designers.
We need a way to draw our plans. Maybe you use SketchUp. Maybe AutoCAD. Maybe something else entirely.
We need a way to communicate with clients. We need contracts and invoices. We need to keep track of selections, orders, project details and a hundred other moving pieces. Some of us use Mydoma, Programa, Design Files, spreadsheets or a combination of all of them.
We’re essentially given the same box of tools.
And yet, hand those tools to ten designers and you’ll end up with ten very different businesses.
I think that’s one of the most interesting things about entrepreneurship.
There isn’t one right way to do this.
Your services don’t have to look like mine. Your process doesn’t have to look like the designer you follow on Instagram. You don’t need the same pricing model, workweek, team structure, software stack or definition of success.
We get to do it our way.
The goal isn’t to build the business everyone else seems to be building.
It’s to understand the foundational pieces well enough that you can make intentional decisions about the business you want to build.
And that’s very different from simply copying someone else’s blueprint.
Let's dive in! 🌊
This Week Inside the Method
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This Week's Blueprint
📐Start with the business before the tools
It’s easy to start with Which software should I use? Which CRM? Which project management platform?
But software doesn’t decide how your business works. You do.
First decide how you want a client to move through your business, what you want to be responsible for, where your boundaries are, and how you want to get paid.
Then choose the tools that help you deliver it.
Otherwise, you can end up designing your business around what your software happens to do.
📐Stop mistaking “different” for “wrong”
One designer marks up product. Another charges procurement fees. Another builds purchasing into a flat design fee.
One designer works five days a week. Another works four.
One wants a team of ten. Another wants to stay intentionally small.
Different business models can all work.
The better question is: Does yours work for you, your clients and the numbers?
That’s where your attention belongs.
📐Build from your own definition of success
This is the piece we don’t talk about enough.
Before you add another service, hire someone, raise your revenue goal or overhaul your process, ask yourself what you are actually trying to build.
More revenue?
More profit?
Fewer projects?
A team?
More creative work?
More time away from the business?
Those answers should shape your business far more than whatever happens to be trending in the design industry this month.
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This Week's Workshop
🛠️ Earlier this week, I joined Poised & Plumb for Beyond the Mood Board: What Every Interior Designer Wishes They Knew.
We talked about the part of becoming a designer that doesn’t always get taught; the transferable skills we bring with us, working with real clients, communication, confidence and what actually happens once design becomes your career.
If you missed us live, the replay is now available.
🛠️ And this coming Tuesday, October 13 at 1 PM ET, I’m hosting The Thoughtfully Designed™ Business Workshop.
I’ll be walking through the five blueprints behind a thoughtfully designed business and giving you a different way to look at what’s happening inside your business—and what actually deserves your attention next.
Because when there are a thousand people online telling you how you should run your business, it helps to have a framework that lets you make those decisions for yourself.
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CEO Reflection
☕What is one thing you’re doing in your business simply because you thought, “That’s how designers are supposed to do it”?
Maybe it still makes sense.
Maybe it never did.
Give yourself ten minutes this week to look at it again—not as the designer doing the work, but as the CEO deciding how the business should work.
Sometimes the next improvement isn’t adding something.
It’s giving yourself permission to do it differently.
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📐 Keep Building
You don’t need to rebuild your business every time you see someone doing something differently.
Take what’s useful. Leave what isn’t. Pay attention to the ideas that make you stop and think, that could work better for me — and ignore the ones that simply make you question yourself.
The goal was never to build the “right” design business.
It’s to keep refining your business until the way it runs feels intentional, sustainable, and unmistakably yours.
That’s the work. And you get to do it your way.
A thoughtfully designed business isn't built in a weekend.
It's built one intentional decision at a time.
And before I go, Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Canadians. I hope this weekend gives you some good food, good people and a little time away from the laptop. I’ll be doing my best to do the same.
Keep building thoughtfully, 💛
Marsha
Helping interior designers build businesses as thoughtfully designed as the homes they create.
