Audrey Scheck is a natural-born storyteller. She was a star reporter at her Texas high school newspaper, and later landed a job in digital sales at Us Weekly magazine. After more than a decade working in advertising, however, she discovered that she was coming down with a case of corporate burnout.
She quit her job and poured her energy into decorating as her family settled in their first home in Los Angeles. That’s when her storytelling skills kicked in again: Scheck began sharing the process on social media, and almost immediately she received requests from friends and family to design their spaces. Before long, it became clear that she had a budding business on her hands.
“I went into it very confidently, feeling like, ‘Even though I don’t have any experience in design, I can do this—and I can do it even better if I have help,’” Scheck tells host Kaitlin Petersen on the latest episode of Trade Tales.
Within months of moving back to her home state, Scheck launched her eponymous firm in Austin in 2021—and she’s already grown the venture into a 20-person team. Scaling her workforce in a relatively short amount of time has meant implementing tight internal structures, including a leadership team to manage the various departments. The secret, she says, is developing a system that allows her to influence every arm of the business yet provides enough autonomy for others to find success on their own terms.
Elsewhere in the episode, the designer talks about her growth mindset as she expanded her team, how a bandwidth tracker helps the firm determine when it’s time to take on new business, and the questions that push clients to try something different.
Crucial insight: Scheck appreciates when clients bring her inspiration they’ve gleaned from Pinterest and social media, but she also asks them to step outside their comfort zone—after all, she points out, by the time those projects have been photographed and published, they’re at least a few years old. She encourages them to remain open to the iterations her team brings to the table—and more often than not, they opt for the more daring choice. “We always present that design plan that’s pushing them outside of their boundaries first, and 98 percent of the time, that’s what they fall in love with, and that’s what we end up doing. Whenever we show them option two, which is safer and more aligned with their inspiration, they’re like, ‘Oh no, no, no,’” she says.
Key quote: “I believe we’ve created a business where my mentality and warmth and passion are so firm that it’s really the direction of everyone on our team. And if I’m doing a good job, our team will exude that all the way through the client experience.”
This episode was sponsored by Dallas Market Center and Kohler. Listen to the show below. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
