Have complicated feelings about staffing up? You’re not alone. Design firm leaders get honest about how to move through the inevitable growing pains of expansion.

When most designers launch their own firms, they’re invigorated by the idea
of infusing their creative vision into a bevy of projects. But as their businesses grow, logistical demands shift, and they can often find themselves facing a new reality: Hiring more employees means learning how to manage a larger team. It also means they spend less time with mood boards and more time balancing an office budget. The transition can leave designers feeling creatively unfulfilled or somewhat out of their depth. Yet amid the challenges comes meaningful transformation, too. Here, nine leaders open up about the skills they had to master when scaling their design businesses, and what they learned along the way.

Monitoring Capacity