Impossibly, Heather Fujikawa found the place on Craigslist: a stunning palazzo once owned by an Italian count, complete with a crystal chandelier and regional decorative touches. The flat would become her new home after she and her husband moved to Italy for his work—but before long, it took on a much greater significance for the young couple, who began leaving their own design mark on the space.

“It was full of so many layers of years of antiquities, and all of these stories—I wanted to be a chapter, or a page, in that home’s book,” Fujikawa tells host Kaitlin Petersen on the latest episode of the Trade Tales podcast.

Fujikawa had spent her postgrad years building a fashion accessories brand alongside her twin sister. In Italy, however, she found herself fondly remembering the early years she spent helping her interior designer mother with the day-to-day duties of her firm. After photos of the couple’s renovation of the space captured the attention of the international press, it became clear that her future was in interior design.

In 2016, they relocated to Dallas, where Fujikawa’s design career began in earnest. The launch of her eponymous firm propelled her into the spotlight when television producers came calling—Fujikawa and her sister, Heidi Andrews, landed starring roles on a home renovation show called Design Twins, which raised her profile and generated a waiting list of prospective clients.

From the start, she looked for support to scale the business: She onboarded the firm’s first employees to help her meet the early demand; and her husband, co-owner Tyson Fujikawa, would later become the company’s full-time CEO. Always looking to refine their brand, the couple acquired another design firm and renamed their business to House Sprucing. In the process, the designer has not only become comfortable with delegation, but has also embraced handing off responsibility to her team—watching as that practice unlocks new talent and pushes the firm as a whole further ahead.

“You find people that are better at things than you are, and you celebrate it,” she says. “You tell them, ‘You rock. You’re better than me. Go do your thing. I am here to support you.’”

Elsewhere in the episode, she shares her designer-client matchmaking process, what it takes to diagnose and address her firm’s bottlenecks, and the value in handing control over to a leadership team.

Crucial insight: Rather than relying solely on selling her clients a creative vision, Fujikawa has found that it’s essential to also emphasize the firm’s systems and processes, which make everything from product selections to payments and billing a smoother operation. “[I say], ‘We’re a business first, and we love design.’ When I tell clients that, they love it, because a lot of people feel like they’re working with a creative and they don’t know—are they going to get a bill at the end, the beginning, the middle? What’s it going to be?” she says. “We take it very seriously to [be running] a business, and that business is interior design.”

Key quote: “You have to empower your team and trust them. … [If] you give them wings to fly, they then have more creative control to be themselves, use their talents, grow, and have a career in your company. Don’t be scared to give that to them. It will free up your life, [and] it will make their life more joyful and fulfilled, because they’ll be able to use more of their capacity.”

This episode was sponsored by Joon Loloi and Serena & Lily. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.