One summer, when visiting her grandparents in the small town of Harts Creek, West Virginia, a young Stephanie Sabbe and her cousins built a treehouse—the future designer’s first foray into construction. While lying atop the treehouse, she thought she saw toilet paper falling from the sky. Turns out, it was markers coming down from an FBI plane, pointing to where her uncle had been growing miles of marijuana. A raid ensued. “I remember feeling so secure in that janky little treehouse we built together,” she tells host Dennis Scully on the latest episode of The Business of Home Podcast. “It was part of [how I learned] how creating home and safe physical spaces, not just mental spaces, [can be] truly transformative.”

Sabbe’s new book, Interiors of a Storyteller, is full of stories like that one, pulled from her childhood and beyond. It’s a memoir dressed up as a design book—one that she hopes will inspire the design-curious who feel they don’t have the bona fides to make it in the industry. “I get a lot of comments from girls who are like, ‘Well, I’m from here, and I could never do it,’ or ‘I don’t know the right people. I don’t have access to that kind of wealth.’ I didn’t either, but I went to design school, I went through the steps, and I’m here—anybody can do it, and I [am] debunking some of the mystery of it,” says the Nashville-based designer, who launched her own firm in 2010. “I like to talk about everything. I will never be mysterious. I just am who I am.”

Sabbe’s unapologetic personality and authentic storytelling can also be found on her Instagram account, where she shares project images along with funny rants and political takes with her 72,000-plus followers. Despite what she admits may seem like a propensity to “overshare,” she sticks to certain boundaries. For example, she doesn’t talk about clients. She also doesn’t post her every move on her weekends, or what she’s doing with her children at every moment.

“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, Sabbe combats Instagram fatigue by knowing when to check out. “I just have to cut it off sometimes. 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,” she adds. “Guard your heart, guard your brain, guard your mind. You don’t watch 12 TV shows every day, and I don’t think you should have to expose yourself to that much social media.”

Crucial insight: Sabbe’s firm has adopted a unique approach to documenting its systems and helping with staff onboarding: They use Vimeo to record their processes—everything from how to use project management software to how to set up CAD files. “I was freaking out in the middle of the night with staff turnover. Every time I hire someone new, I have to take two weeks off of productivity just to get them onboarded,” she says. “We started making these videos, and we have a little webcam, and we just pass it around. And so we have this library of everything we do and the way we do it, recording our screens and our voices walking through it. Now I sleep through the night well.”

Key quote: “I think we have to really be ourselves [on social media]. If you like me, you like me, and if you don’t, you don’t. … At the end of the day, I want to be more than an interior designer. I love what I do. I feel fortunate every single day [to do] what I do, but I’m a whole person, and people who own homes are whole people, and I want people to understand that I get that you’re more than whatever the job is that’s paying for you to hire me.”

This episode is sponsored by Ernesta and Hickory Chair. Listen to the show below. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

The Thursday Show

Host Dennis Scully and BOH executive editor Fred Nicolaus discuss the biggest news in the design world, including Houzz’s 2025 State of the Industry report, all the latest hires, and how designers feel about “dopamine decor.” Later, Cyrus Loloi joins the show to discuss the thinking behind Loloi’s new DTC sister brand, Joon Loloi.

This episode is sponsored by Jaipur Living and Hector Finch. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.