Jim Dove’s first job wasn’t quite what he had envisioned when he decided to pursue a career in the design industry. Fresh out of UCLA’s graduate architecture program, he took on a commercial design gig that left him stuck behind a desk, designing buildings for the Denver airport. After a few years, he was ready for something totally different, so he took a job working for a kitchen design firm.

“I instantly loved it,” Dove tells host Kaitlin Petersen on the latest episode of the Trade Tales podcast. “When you do the kitchen, you’re one of the centerpieces of the house—you’re an important player to the client; you’re an important player to the architect, the contractor. You’re part of the play.”

After a number of years learning the specialty under other designers, Dove launched his own kitchen design firm in 2013, serving a high-end clientele out of a small boutique showroom in Short Hills, New Jersey. Within a few years, he started securing new projects in those clients’ second homes—many of them in Palm Beach. There, he saw a major opening for his services: There weren’t nearly as many kitchen designers operating in the market as there were in the Northeast.

By 2021, Jim Dove Design had a new showroom and a new headquarters in sunny West Palm Beach. But his growth trajectory wasn’t over yet. In the years since, Dove has discovered how to establish a thriving business in one of the industry’s top markets—a feat that has required good salesmanship, mindful community-building efforts and a lot of patience.

“I’ve realized that it takes more than a beautiful studio, a great personality [or even] talent in design,” says Dove. “It takes time—especially for people in the industry—to gain their trust.”

Elsewhere in the episode, he shares how he sells his vision to clients, the tricky teamwork balance required of kitchen designers, and how his showhouse experiences convinced him he could make it in a new market.

Crucial insight: Many of Dove’s clients are homeowners who have seen his work in showhouses, or who have wandered into his showroom space. But as a kitchen designer, his specialty allows him to be hired by fellow professionals too—a community he’s hoping to strengthen to develop a more robust pipeline of potential projects. “I’m trying to build my clientele base—my builder, contractor, architect, interior designer base—[so that I have] a business that is feeding me,” he says.

Key quote: “Every talented designer I know is a really good salesperson. You have to know how to sell yourself to be successful. [It’s about selling] your vision, and then the product falls in, because if they believe you, they’ll believe what you sell. The most important thing is gaining a client’s trust.”

This episode was sponsored by Four Hands. Listen to the show below. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.