For each of the last five years, I interviewed a designer from every state in the union, asking them to share how they built their businesses and what challenges they faced as creative entrepreneurs. The idea began as something of a thought experiment: I was driving across a bleak stretch of Midwestern farmland in December 2019 and started to play a game with myself, testing how many designers I knew—in Iowa, then in Nebraska and beyond.
At the time, I had a nagging sense that the industry, collectively, wasn’t doing enough to discover new voices. Design media was part of the problem: an echo chamber that was very good at talking to the same—let’s say 500—people again and again, most highly concentrated in a handful of cities. In that, I was technically part of the problem. Here I was, a Midwestern girl at heart who didn’t know any designers in my home state of Kansas.
That January, I emailed Ashley Gilbreath in Alabama, asking her to take a leap of faith and tell me the story of her business in a way that I’d never seen published before: an in-depth accounting of all the ways running a design firm can test you. The next week, I talked to Alaska designers Jeremy Bauer and Jason Clifton, business partners who blew my mind with the logistical gymnastics they execute to get product to their projects undamaged. The idea was to make my way through the country alphabetically, state by state—introducing the broader industry to new faces and learning about the unique ways that geography shapes opportunities. (I’m proud of just how many alums of this project have gone on to receive great industry recognition and acclaim.) The 50 States Project was born.
Those early interviews made a splash when they were published—but they also profoundly changed my approach to telling industry stories, and my understanding of what our mission should be here at Business of Home. Very quickly, I was overwhelmed with emails and DMs that included a common refrain: “This made me feel less alone.” The experience of stepping into someone else’s career—realizing that you weren’t the only one who struggled with impostor syndrome, or said yes too much, or hired the wrong person, or lost money on a job, or took a step backward in your business to reset and regroup—proved validating in an industry where success or silence are the two main modes of communication. Showing the journey could be more meaningful, I found, than simply doling out the “right” answer to a business challenge.
I started the 50 States Project to champion individual designers. But the weekly series ended up being an accidental profile of the broader industry as well. It started, by chance, only months before the Covid pandemic changed everything about the way designers run their firms. Week by week, those early interviews documented the fear that business would dry up completely amid lockdowns, followed by the frenetic demand for design that pushed many firms to their limits and beyond. As the highs and lows of the pandemic era have leveled off, these conversions have captured the challenging questions that principals have been asking themselves, like: What do I really want from this business? How do I want to work? How do I change my firm to better align with my hopes and dreams?
The designers and I laughed (and often cried) on these weekly calls. I am so grateful for their trust, honesty and vulnerability. For many, I was asking questions they’d never had to answer out loud—questions about how it feels to run a design business and what it means to be successful—and it has been moving to navigate the emotional responses to those topics together. I’m not a designer, but I found myself benefitting from these conversations as a leader and creative thinker, and their insights have made a meaningful impact at BOH.
Closing this chapter of my reporting career is bittersweet, but I know it’s also the perfect time to start asking new questions. I’m excited for what comes next at Business of Home. We’ll be launching a host of fun new projects soon, as we continue to explore what it means to build a better design business. Our goal has always been to celebrate the entirety of the design industry, and we’ll keep doing just that in all of our pursuits throughout 2025 and beyond.
In the meantime, I would be remiss not to share the top takeaways from the 50 States Project’s final chapter—lessons in billing what you’re worth, mentoring the next generation, and more—that I hope you’ll use to guide you as we enter a new year.
ON OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE
Documenting your processes can have wide-reaching impacts. When South Carolina–based designer Betsy Berry started drafting a manual outlining her firm’s operations, she got granular, specifying details like how emails are written and what font to use in a budget document. At the time, her goal was to streamline operations. But what she quickly discovered was that it transformed her relationship with her team members as well. “The fewer questions they have, the more secure they feel. ... It’s about building confidence,” she says.
When she rolled out the manual, Berry also implemented an annual retreat where the entire firm reviews their procedures. At first, there was a lot to get through. “I remember one year we talked about budgets for two hours: what to include, what not to include, what’s client-facing and what’s not, how detailed to get, how often to issue them,” she recalls. But the benefits were immediately obvious: “It was pretty amazing to sit down and go, ‘Yes, we do this every day, but let’s all talk about the best way we think we all do it as a team, and then we’re going to write it down.’ It creates a grounding force for everyone.”
ON BUILDING YOUR NETWORK
When she pivoted from a fashion career to design, New Jersey–based Sarah Storms refused to be afraid of what (or who) she didn’t know. Instead, she registered for every industry event she could and started asking questions. “Creating relationships is my strong suit. So when I started this business, I showed up. I’ve been to every single High Point Market since I started my business, and I wasn’t afraid to introduce myself to anybody,” the designer recalls.
But being present is only half of the equation. “I followed up with ‘Oh, it was nice to see you,’ or ‘Thank you so much for your help.’ A little bit of kindness goes a long way,” she says. “And then I made sure that if I had made a relationship with a vendor at Market, I went back the next time to say, ‘It’s so good to see you again.’ It’s so important to really connect with people so that it’s a real-life relationship versus just a transactional one. I want to be able to have conversations so that I’m not always coming to somebody asking for a favor, or so that I’m not pitching a project every time I talk to an editor.”
ON BILLING CONFIDENTLY
Billing hang-ups plague designers of all stripes. But looking at the big picture—and leaning on her former career as a litigator—helped Massachusetts-based designer Robin Gannon gain a clear view of how to organize her firm and charge for its output. “The part that brings me joy is the beginning and the end—but in order to do that, you’ve got to get through the middle,” she says. “I think it’s actually the most important part of the job. At the end of the day, of course everything is going to look pretty, and hopefully the clients are super happy. But how painful was it to get there? Maybe it’s not perfect—nothing is—but the goal is to get clients smoothly through the process.” That emphasis on execution led her to invest deeply in team members focused on operations and logistics. In fact, almost half of her team is not producing design work.
That doesn’t mean that time isn’t billable. “I bill for everybody’s hours that go toward the project,” says Gannon. “If my account manager is paying invoices or cutting checks for your project, he bills his hours. I wouldn’t have to pay him if he wasn’t working on your project. So if I have to pay him to work on your project, I’m billing you for that.” There are some exceptions—notably, the designer doesn’t bill for the post-installation work to repair or replace damaged goods—but the exceptions are few and far between. More importantly, Gannon feels no guilt about billing for her team’s hard work. “I always say this to clients: I run my business the way I ran my law firm. Every 15 minutes of time that is worked on your project gets billed to you—that’s just the way we do it, and if you don’t like that, I understand, but this is a business. I mean, I love what I do 90 percent of the time, but at the end of the day, I’m in this to make money.”
ON TAMING YOUR INNER PERFECTIONIST
The pursuit of perfection can quickly become a one-way ticket to burnout. When West Virginia designer Sharron Braylock launched Studio One Design, she was laser-focused on making sure every single project was magazine-ready, which could leave her paralyzed with indecision and doubt. “It would take me a long time to pull the trigger on small details because I just couldn’t get past the thought of, ‘What if this is picked up in a magazine?’” she says. In addition to the emotional toll, her hang-ups kept her from closing out jobs so that she could move on to the next one. “The projects were lingering,” she says. “And then that light bulb went off one day, and I was like, ‘Sharron, enough is enough. We’re going to show up and give our best, but perfection doesn’t exist. Make the client happy, solve the problems that you’re hired to solve, and then put a lid on it.’”
The result? “I am much more at peace with the decisions that I make. There’s a lot less pressure. It’s a healthy perspective,” says Braylock. “Now, I’m very mindful of how I focus my attention on projects. I want to give clients the best of us, but I also understand that some projects are just a project—as long as the client is happy, we have to be happy, and we move on.”
ON FINDING JOY IN MENTORSHIP
As a firm grows, it’s common for the principal to struggle with the way their role evolves. Often, they’ve launched their firm because they love creative work—but eventually, managing the business and overseeing a design team can leave them feeling removed from the part of the job they’re most passionate about. As her business grew, New York designer Susana Simonpietri realized she needed to change: “I had to let the people around me be creative and do their thing, even if that takes away from my ability to do a lot of the creative work,” she says. “I had to replace that with [something else that] brings me joy.”
Simonpietri found joy in mentoring her team and helping them take their designs to the next level. “I spend most of my time talking to my team about where they are in their projects. They come in and sit, almost like I’m a therapist, and they say, ‘This is happening right now, and I’m wondering, what would you do?’ And then we map it out together,” she explains. That approach has been good for her and her business. “Our projects are getting better and better because I don’t have to worry about the small things. I come in when they have just about everything sorted out, and I’m able to say, ‘This is great. But you know, what would be incredible is if we did X.’”
On Talking Effectively About Sustainability
Sustainability is (finally) gaining steam in the design world—but according to Carter Averbeck of Omforme Design, many in the industry are going about it the wrong way. “A lot of people in this field who take on this mission of sustainability have really tried to get the education out there. But guess what? Nobody cares,” says the Minnesota-based designer. “What they do care about is, ‘What’s in it for me?’ I’ve found that if I can showcase it in a fun way, or if I can create something so beautiful that you’re only looking at it from [an aesthetic] standpoint—that’s [more effective at grabbing interest], and then afterward I’ll say something like, ‘Congratulations, I don’t have to cut down any trees in your front yard to make the furniture.’ The education can’t come first.”
For Averbeck, the behind-the-scenes work to source more sustainably has become the bedrock of his firm. He often asks his vendors for overstock or discontinued SKUs, and has amassed a warehouse of wood, tile and marble by asking local builders for their excess materials. “Someone like me can take that and create gold,” he explains. “If we can get something to look so good that the public has no idea that it’s upcycled, we’ve reached our goal of getting the public to buy upcycled goods.”
On Leaning Into What Makes You Unique
When an opportunity to participate in the 2023 Southeastern Designer Showhouse came her way, Jessica Kain Barton of Kentucky–based J. Kathryn Interiors knew she wanted to make a splash. “I told myself, ‘I’m just going to go for it. I’m going to go totally off the wall and do everything I’ve ever wanted to do. I’m going to make a name for myself in this market by doing what I really love,’” she recalls. It would be a major turning point for her business—and a source of pride. “The first weekend, about half of the people who came in would be like, ‘Oh, my God, this is so beautiful,’ or, ‘This reminds me of Bunny Mellon,’ or, ‘I can see that Mario Buatta vibe I’m reading about,’” she says. “The other half would be like, ‘Oh, this is way too much.’ And at first, hearing that kind of hurt my feelings. But by the end of the month, I loved hearing both kinds of feedback.”
Words of wisdom from a developer whose company had produced the event further cemented her resolve to continue showcasing her unique design perspective. “He said something like, ‘I think you should be really happy with how this experience went for you, because a lot of people walked into different rooms and they felt indifferent. But people walked into your room and they either loved it or they hated it. Design is supposed to provoke, because not every designer is going to be for every person, and you’re creating your niche. You’re showing that you can do different things, and you’re getting a reaction.’”
On Incentivizing Your Team
As she grew her staff, Oklahoma designer Hannah Sutter started looking for ways to compensate her employees for their hard work and also encourage them to take initiative and get more involved in the firm’s success. She has structured her payroll so that each designer earns a commission on product sales. “They have a base pay rate, but then if they sell product, they get a cut of what we make. Similarly, if they bring a client to the firm, they’re paid double their hourly rate, and their percentage goes up on the cut of whatever they sell as well,” she explains. “I felt like they should be rewarded for bringing people in. It’s not a requirement by any means—it should solely be my job to do that—but if they do it, great. And then if they’ve hit a certain number in markup, their cut increases as well. So if they bring in $75,000 for the firm, then they get 15 percent of whatever they bring in. But if it goes up to $125,000, their cut bumps up to 18 percent—percentage increases to encourage them.”
She’s also adamant about empowering her team to take the lead on projects, delegating much of the day-to-day communication with clients to her employees. “Once I’ve assigned the project to a designer, we both go for that first consult meeting to make sure we’re a good fit with that client, and then I’ll shoot them a proposal. And then that’s [the designer the client] sees throughout the whole project,” explains Sutter. “I think that’s very important—I mean, that’s why I hired [my staff]. They’re so involved, and the face of everything. It’s not like they put [the design] together and then I present what they did.” She’s clear with clients from the start that they’re hiring the firm, not her, even if her name is on the door: “I have worked really hard to establish an experienced, hands-on team that provides exactly the same amount of customer service that I would provide,” she says. “I feel like if the client knows that they have a team taking care of their house versus one person, that should be a benefit, right?”
On Eliminating Procedural Pain Points
After losing countless hours to triaging her inbox, North Carolina–based designer Heather Garrett made a drastic move: She stopped emailing with clients. But to achieve success, clear communication was needed from the outset of each project. “We [manage our projects] in Trello. That’s the way we communicate: We give updates there, we’ll tell them the direction we’re leaning if there’s a choice point, and then I say, ‘And you tell me if you want to have a conversation about it or if you want to do something differently.’ But I try not to make it this ongoing dialogue all the time, with [us asking] questions like, ‘What do you think about this?’ No. I’m going to tell you what I think about it—that’s what they’re paying me for, right?—and then you can let me know if something doesn’t feel right to you.”
At first, Garrett was blown away that clients were willing to abandon emails. (”In my heart of hearts, I was like, ‘Who wants a new app with new parameters?’” she jokes.) But her clients’ rapid adoption reinforced a key takeaway: “They don’t want to hang out and email with me either,” she says. “I think it’s everybody’s goal to be able to do other activities and finish the house.”
On Reframing How You Bill
Most design firms wrap up a project with a final bill for all of the costs that are impossible to pin down in advance—fees for hardware installation, art hanging and the like. But after transitioning to thoroughly researched flat fees for her firm’s design work and project management, asking for that final check rubbed Julie Anne Baur of Winding Lane Interiors the wrong way. “On a $300,000 project, they might owe us $2,000 at the end,” says the Ohio designer. It was a fee she could easily justify (“It was very specific”), but it still ran counter to her approach of setting clear client expectations about the cost of a project.
Then, she landed on a new strategy: Estimate those end-of-project costs, add a little cushion, and take a retainer for that amount. In the best-case scenarios, she ended projects by writing them a check. “The goal is that either they owe us nothing at the end, or we give them money back—and let me tell you, clients love that,” says Baur. “They’ve just spent a half a million dollars on a project, and then we write them a check back for $2,000. It has been so well received.”
On Finding Clients in Unexpected Places
At first, it was just an experiment: Illinois designer Caroline Turner had a team member film her walking through a project, then threw it on TikTok. Soon, those videos started netting serious clients—with serious budgets. The experience quickly debunked one of the biggest theories she’d heard about TikTok: that it was only young people on the app, and that no one with a taste for for luxury design would find their designer through the platform. Not only were the leads good, but the projects felt more seamless from the start. People who are from TikTok and Instagram understand my point of view. They bought into what I’m saying, which is a lot about natural stone and natural materials. And if they’re already aligned with that thinking, it’s a much easier sell with anything in the project because they already trust me,” she explains. “I’ve quite often had people be like, ‘I feel like I already know you,’ and our calls go so much better.”
These days, Turner is leaning into those TikTok clients—in some cases, even choosing to invest only in video content for the firm’s projects and eschewing still photography. “I’m still a bit scared of it because I’m like, ‘No, we have to have real photos,’” she says. “But if I look at the ROI, it’s significantly higher on the video side than it is on the professional photography side.”
For more top takeaways from the 50 States Project, explore our end-of-year recaps from 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.
