After 49 episodes of The Business of Home Podcast, 2025 is coming to an end. Over the past 12 months, experts across the industry chatted with host Dennis Scully about everything from how tariffs are affecting their projects to the ongoing impact of AI. Here, we’ve collected 10 insights from this year’s most illuminating conversations.

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Back to Basics
Martin Ephson—the mastermind behind Farrow & Ball’s resurgence—joined the show in November to discuss his career trajectory. When he and business partner Tom Helme acquired a majority stake in the English paint brand in 1992, it had a small team working out of 6,000 square feet in Dorset, England; 14 years later, the company owns 60 showrooms across the globe, powered by a team of about 400 employees working out of a 60,000-square-foot facility. The duo sold the brand in 2006, then took time off before returning to the industry with fabric brand Fermoie six years later. “[In the textile industry] there are fewer and fewer mills, which means there’s less choice of substrates or materials. The enjoyment of printed fabric had started to disappear, and we felt that we would like to bring [it] back,” says Ephson.

Authenticity Rules
Celebrated designer Nate Berkus came on the podcast this fall with a clear message to young designers: “You have to work to be authentic, because there’s so many opportunities to not be.” Berkus has had an enviable career, starting out at Leslie Hindman’s auction house in Chicago before launching his own firm in the mid-1990s, which quickly drew the attention of Oprah Winfrey’s production company, Harpo. This spotlight led to a talk show, product licenses and numerous book deals—but through it all, Berkus has remained true to himself. “Everyone’s an influencer,” he says. “[Companies] want your followers, and they want to link everything to a direct sale. And you as the brand have to protect the information that you’re giving to your followers. You can’t just give them everything. You have to use your social media as almost your own magazine [to make sure] you’re allowing in the pages of that [magazine only what] you feel is really good for those people who follow you to know. You cannot take every deal. It’s your job to figure out what is going to be exciting and ahead of the trend curve, or ignore the trend curve, and that is a responsibility, at 53, that I think I’m pretty good at now.”

AI Breeds Overengagement
Designer Ray Booth sat down with host Dennis Scully in September to talk about his full-circle career with architect Bobby McAlpine. Raised in Alabama, Booth was one of McAlpine’s first interns before he left for New York to work for designers John Saladino and Clodagh. About 10 years later, he moved back to his home state and became a partner at McAlpine’s firm, leading both the New York and Nashville studios. With his decades of experience, Booth is thoughtful about how the industry has changed, especially with the growing use of AI and the availability of information without context. “I think clients used to hire you to do what you do, and they would allow you to do it. Now, through more social media, more exposure, more technology, a lot of clients—not all clients—are more engaged. I welcome engagement. I want it to be a collaboration: I learn something, you learn something,” he says. “But [for] some clients it becomes an obstruction, and you’re not able to make a decision. And ultimately, I’m a doer. I don’t want to go through so many versions of any design that it gets watered down into something that is just not strong. … I think so many people are so hyped up and so engaged that it doesn’t always benefit the end result.”

A Tariff Breakdown
Alex Shuford, the CEO of Rock House Farm—the North Carolina–based family of furniture brands that includes Century, Hickory Chair and Highland House—returned to the podcast in September to discuss the hot-button topics plaguing the industry today. The biggest is no surprise: tariffs. While most of RHF’s production happens domestically (collectively, its brands run nine factories in the U.S.), Shuford explains that he believes all of the tariff tumult will ultimately have a negative impact on his business. “My Century case goods factory will probably end up with a lot more interest in its abilities than it had half a year ago,” he says. “But on the flip side, I’ve got to sell into a marketplace that requires healthy retailers as well as designers. You take the retailer out of the ecosystem, and we all have a problem. … High-end, A-list designers will be fine [on] day one, day two, [even] day 300—but you roll the clock forward a year or two, and the loss of that sampling out in the marketplace will be a real problem for us.”

A Lesson in Perseverance
When Corey Damen Jenkins joined the show, he shared the inspiring story of how he began his career with the goal of knocking on 1,000 doors to find his first client (they were behind the 779th door). That project led to him landing a show on HGTV, which led to a room at the 2019 Kips Bay Decorator Show House. Now, he is an Elle Decor A-Lister and on the AD100. In the episode, the New York designer explains his namesake firm’s billing policy, which he refers to as the “Mariah Carey principle”: “Mariah is a gifted vocalist, but she’s also a really gifted songwriter, so she’s paid a fee to write her songs. She’s paid a fee to record the songs in the sound booth, and then anytime she performs the songs live in concert on a stage somewhere, she’s paid a third time. You’re not paid just for writing the song. You’re paid three different times for three different services,” he says. “The design concept [is equivalent to] creating the song, writing it. Now you have to go out and perform it—get the contractors in place, pull all the different workrooms into place. [And finally] you have to install the house well. Now you’re performing live—you have to go out there and make it a physical, tangible reality. So why are you charging a flat fee for just writing the music? You should be billing hourly for making the music, to bring it to life and to perform live.”

A Phoenix From the Ashes
This summer, Toronto-based designer Ashley Montgomery got vulnerable on the podcast about splitting with her husband and business partner, who had joined the firm to oversee operations and accounting. Now that the dust has settled, she has emerged with an appreciation for new aspects of her work: “[Before the split] I knew what was happening with my design team, but I didn’t know what was happening in terms of money coming in, money going out, who’s owing invoices, who hasn’t been sent invoices, what are we investing in, what are we not investing in,” she says. “That’s taken me the better part of a year and a half to get myself back into. … [Now] I enjoy the business operations.”

Stepping Back
When she joined the show this spring, Joanna Gaines shared details about her unlikely path to becoming a household name. While interning in New York, she found solace in the city’s vibrant array of shops, an experience that ignited a desire to one day run her own. That dream came true in 2003, when she and her husband Chip opened Magnolia Market, which served as the catalyst for five seasons of Fixer Upper, various product lines, branded restaurants, a magazine, a hotel and even a TV network. Last year, Gaines decided to do something she had never done in her two decades in business: Take the summer off. “That time away gave us clarity for what’s next, and [reinforced that] sometimes it’s important to step away for a second so you can understand what you’re holding [on to] and also, ‘What do I need to let go of?’” she says. “You can’t carry everything with you as you move forward. You’ve got to drop something if you’re going to keep picking more up.”

A Social Media Handbook
Stephanie Sabbe came on the podcast in February to share anecdotes from her new book, Interiors of a Storyteller—including a colorful story about an FBI raid on her uncle’s marijuana field. Sabbe has garnered a lot of attention for her wildly entertaining Instagram persona, where she shares project images, funny rants and political takes with her 80,000-plus followers. On the episode, she admits that what may seem like a propensity to “overshare” is actually a coordinated approach with clear boundaries. “People feel like they know a lot about me, but most of my life is not documented. I’m just chatting in my car,” she says. And despite spending plenty of time on the app, the Nashville-based designer combats Instagram fatigue by knowing when to check out. “I just have to cut it off sometimes,” she explains. “To me, it’s not unkind to not follow everybody. Maybe their information is something you just don’t want to look at all day. Guard your heart, guard your brain, guard your mind.”

Embracing Tradition
A career advisor once told Ben Pentreath that it was a terrible idea to go into architecture, the English designer recalled when he joined the show in February. He didn’t listen, and instead went on to attend the Prince of Wales’s Institute of Architecture (now called The King’s Foundation), where he began work on Poundbury, a planned community inspired by an old English settlement. It was a project that would inform his work for years to come. The designer founded his firm of 40 in 2004, and now designs private homes and housing projects while also running a quirky retail shop on the side—but the spirit of looking back to look forward, embodied in Poundbury, remains constant. In all of his endeavors, Pentreath refuses to box himself in. “I’m not worried about spreading myself too thin,” he says. “Some people come to me with a certain idea: They think I’m an interior designer and have absolutely no idea that I’ve designed a building in my life. There’s something quite nice about not having all of your eggs in a single basket.”

Thinking Out of the Box
Shawn Henderson—this year’s first guest—knew he would be an interior design entrepreneur from an early age, having learned how to run a business “by osmosis” throughout his childhood (his father ran a restaurant and several other companies). Since launching his firm in 2003, the New York designer has let go of his pursuit of carving out a visually recognizable design niche. “I’ve come to terms with the fact that my work is adaptable,” he says. “That is so important for me as a designer and [is in line with] my desire to keep learning, growing and evolving,” he says. “I think it’s more about the feeling that I create in interiors. Some will skew more modern, some mountain house and some more country, but there’s a sense of appropriateness to the space that I want to create.”