You don’t last 20-plus years in the interior design industry without learning a few valuable lessons along the way. While every interior design firm is unique, the principles of sound business management and marketing still apply. You can learn them the hard way, or you can learn them from others who’ve learned the hard way. The latter path is less of a steep and bumpy road to long-term growth and success.

In this episode, Gail talks with Katie Decker-Erickson, principal with Color Works Design, a company she founded in 2007. Although she started out focused solely on designing with color, clients kept asking her to include an ever-increasing number of interior design services. After working in residential design for several years, she came to realize she preferred commercial projects. Today, with a team of between 15 and 20, her firm specializes in hospitality, senior living, university facilities and housing, and multifamily housing.

Gail asked Katie what are some of the lessons she’s learned over the years about how to operate and market her business. Katie said first and foremost, you have to let go and be comfortable delegating work to others. To grow, she said, you need a vision and a team to execute on that vision. “It’s all about letting go to the right person for the right reason. You can’t do it all on your own.”

Furthermore, she said, “Figure out who is your target market and go hard. If you’re trying to be everything to everyone, you’re nothing to no one.” Take care of the clients you have, she added. They can become clients for life. Also, take care of your team and they will stay with you over the years.

Your business should not become a burden. “Your business should work for you, not you work for it.” Do some self-introspection, she advised. Figure out where is your happy place—i.e., what fulfills you and gives you joy—and pursue that. Let others do the other stuff. 

Over the years, Katie and her firm have experienced some good times and some not-so-good times. Just accept that these are normal business cycles. “Don’t be afraid to let your business expand and contract,” she said.

Gail and Katie also talked about how AI might impact the interior design industry and how Katie is using it now in her firm. They also discussed the importance of curating your firm’s culture. For those insights and more, listen to the entire podcast.

If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full shownotes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s12e6-shownotes

Mentioned in This Podcast

For more information about Katie and her firm, go the website at colorworks.design.

Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors.

Welcome to the podcast, Katie. I have a special guest today, Katie Decker Erickson, and I am so excited to have a conversation with you today. You and I had a good chat not too long ago and you’ve been doing interior design for a while now and I’d love to know about how you got into it.

That’s so kind of you, Gail. I’m so honored to be here. And yeah, I don’t know a while that’s like a kind way of saying someone is seasoned, right? Which is code for old. And we’re now at the age where we’re giving back in our industry. Yeah. You know, it’s funny. My journey to design was very unique. it wasn’t traditional. Like I woke up my junior year of high school and decided I should do interior design. And that is what I love. And I’m going to go pursue that in college. I actually didn’t come to interior design until I was in. Gosh, early twenties.

It was after I had my master’s degree in business administration that I went I want to start a business and I love creating and I need to use the left and right side of my brains or my brain to feel like satisfied at the end of the day and It was funny. I was actually fixing and flipping houses at the time or condos and I was so frustrated that I couldn’t find somebody who just did color I just only wanted someone to do color. I didn’t need a full design experience and everyone wanted

to sell me on the whole package and I just thought, heaven help, there’s gotta be a better answer. So I reached out to, I started doing some Google research and found the International Association of Color Consultants and said, I wanna reach out, wanna figure out how does this whole thing work? What do we do? And went and got certified and then started helping others. And really that’s how Colorworks was born back in 2007. It was just out of the desire to focus on color. it was for someone who hadn’t,

gone through a four-year formal program. It was the perfect gateway because I wasn’t focusing on every aspect of design. I was focusing on a singular aspect. And that was so lovely because it just gave me a really nice way to dip my toe in the pond. And then as our clients kept coming to us wanting more things, which I’m sure so many people can relate to on your show, you just keep adding to your services until you get where you need to be and what satisfies them.

And so you’re now doing residential as well. Well, great question. So I lasted about three years in residential truthfully, Gail. And then I quit. my gosh. To all you residential designers out there, you have a job a billion times harder than I do. You know, it was really challenging for me because of my MBA. It’s a blessing and a curse, right? But I approach it from a business perspective. And so there were so many wives that wanted a best friend to have.

with and talk about pillows. And I love being a girly girl, but not when I’m on the clock doing eight to five. Like I want to move projects and get things done and have decision makers and no budgets. And I was just like, I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth for it. So to the residential designers in your audience that do, I humbly bow down because, and then you get the spousal component, right? And I’m just like, yeah, I can’t do marital counseling.

I would have gone to school to get a degree in that if that’s what I wanted to do. And like the fact that you’re fighting over the sofa, I think we have bigger problems here. I mean, just a hunch, but it’s just, so was funny. I actually started segueing into commercial about three years in, and then I just kept going down that road until eventually I was just full-time commercial and multifamily, which is what I love. And then that’s now kind of what I coach too and helping other designers who are saying,

Gosh, I can relate to every part of that. And I love hospitality or I love, hotel motel or I love, just figuring out how do we get there and how do we get you into the space you want to play? Cause I think so many times we just think there’s one space and design, right? Like I’m an interior designer. It’s not like I’m a drafter. I’m a space planner. I’m a sorcerer. hear that those exists, but they’re much less hurt. feel like, they’re just as valid, know? Well, that’s interesting. And so because you didn’t have.

a design degree if I heard this correctly. A hundred percent. Okay. And so you have an MBA. Yep. And so obviously you’re smart. that’s all. No, I got really bored. I needed something to do and I hadn’t met my husband yet. Let’s not, let’s be perfectly honest, Gail. Well, you don’t do an MBA just because you’re You’re sweet. You’re very kind.

Okay. So commercial design. that’s a whole different animal and learning how to price that. did you learn how to price? Cause you didn’t come from a design background. Yeah. It’s a very fair question. was a lot of trial and error to be honest with you, but I also had some clients in the beginning who came to me and they’re like, well, we have a quote for this, but we’d rather work with you. Can you make that work? And I’m like, sure. And then a couple of those come across your desk and then you start

talking to your trade partners about what can we do and what accounts can we set up and how do we make this work? And you just kind of navigate your way through it. I will say our model is pretty fluid though, because we’re so economically based. Like right now, interest rates are high. It’s been a hard year to make deals pencil straight up. And so one thing we did as an effort of goodwill to our clients, because we always joke that we love to acquire clients and not lose them. We collect clients.

But as part of goodwill and as part of marketing, we said, we’re not going to raise our rates in 2024. And we did a whole marketing campaign around that and said, hey, we get it’s a hard year for you guys. We get that you’re having a hard time making it pencil. These transactions aren’t going the way you want. The remittals you’re wanting to do on as-builts aren’t quite as advanced as maybe you want. We’re going to work with you because we want to hang with you for the long haul. Things like that, I think, make a huge difference. And so we’re constantly watching the market.

I’m super excited as of this recording, hopefully next week, I’m praying interest rates get cut because all that really does affect our market on the commercial sides. And I think it’s a lot more quick than it is on the residential side. Like on the residential side, I think there’s a trickle down component when it comes to working with rates and being in multimillion dollar spaces, it’s pretty instantaneous. Cause if the asset isn’t gonna pencil,

the buyer isn’t going to buy and we’re probably not going to do the value add to it that they initially envisioned. So you’re doing multifamily. You’re doing hospitality. Yep. And so between the two, which one do you like the best? I love multifamily. That’s a great question. I love multifamily. And the reason why is because interest rates have stayed high now for, well,

what we consider high, we really got used to twos, know, the twos were a really nice spot. And then we saw the eights, now we’re hanging out in the sixes, but sixes when you’re used to twos still feel like a really big jump, right? And so what we’re realizing out of that is that a lot of people are gonna be lifelong renters because coupled with that interest rate is the cost of housing prices. I mean, I don’t know about you, but when I bought my house in 2018,

The price of it’s almost doubled. And that just isn’t sustainable for so many people across the country. It’s just not a doable model. So you add that, the cost, the initial purchase price, plus the cost of the interest rate. And there’s a lot of people that are saying, I’m not just gonna be renting when I get out of college. I’m gonna bring my first baby home to this apartment. I may bring a second baby home to this apartment. My elderly parents may be in an apartment.

How do we get this to feel like home? And that’s really my inspiration point and what our team navigates around is how do we create places that truly feel like home? They’re not just spaces. We use spaces that word a lot in our industry and our tech line has always been turning spaces into places. Like this is a place I’m proud to bring my baby home to. This is a place that I’m really excited to move my parents into because it’s going to be small. They’re not going to have to deal with any yard work. it’s easily maintained. And so.

Yeah, we’ve really started. will tell you that really is my passion is we’ve really started designing those spaces of saying, how do we create resident amenity areas and outdoor living and dog parks? Cause how many people don’t have kids, but have four legged kids, right? how do we create those spaces so they feel at home and not just like they’re an afterthought, regardless of what life stage they’re at? Well, that’s a really great,

background about what you were doing or what you do with that particular area and how do you find that to be different from doing hospitality work? It’s a great question. Like we’ll do senior living hospitality. We’ll do university settings. It’s so different because it tends to be more broad. So in multifamily, you’re probably going to have, unless you’re like sitting in downtown,

university campus housing, right? You’re gonna have some diversity, which I really love. So you’re gonna have different age brackets, different backgrounds culturally that are gonna come into this space. How do you make that work in a constructive and meaningful way that speaks across a broad spectrum? Very different than saying we’re gonna design university housing, which we love doing. We love doing university settings, but it’s a whole different vibe and it’s a much more narrow target.

demographic, like we’re working on a 20,000 square foot building out of Oklahoma right now for university. It’s their original hall. And so we’re preserving the integrity of the exterior, right? But we’re taking the interior and completely redoing it to today’s generation and what they’re looking for when they go to choose a school. That’s a very, you’re looking for a four year segment in time. What do they want to capture? What appeals to them? So much different conversation than.

trying to have a broad, appealing multifamily, which is where the challenge kind of comes. And I like it. I like that challenge of trying to make it appeal and feel like home. I’m sure. So how many people do you have on your team now? Great question. So full and part time, we average somewhere between 15 and 20, depending on workload. And so we’ve grown that’s everything from social media to IT to it runs the gambit.

And I always say, and I would be so remiss to not say it here. I stand on the shoulders of giants. I am so thankful for our team. have the absolutely best team and it’s been curated almost over what? Almost 20 years. but each of them is so good at what they do. I am so privileged to pull up a seat at their table every day and see what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. That is such a good attitude. And, and it seems that you have a really good culture from what I’m hearing.

I was, that is so, that means the world to me that you would say that we’ve worked so hard to establish that culture because a hundred percent of the people on our team are remote. We all work remotely creating culture in a remote environment can be really, really difficult. call it getting sucked into our vortex.

We want them to get sucked into our vortex. But yeah, just like we have petals on our logo, each of those petals stands for something, whether it’s we call it care, C-A-R-E, care, ecter, like you care and you actually do have character, kindness, curiosity, and concise. I think concise is a really big one for me as an MBA because I think, and one thing I coach too a lot with designers is we get busy creating, but are we actually profitable? Are we actually meeting deadlines? Are we hitting budgets?

We got to get this concise and dialed in. so we’re taking this client on a journey. How do we do so in a meaningful and successful way to them? and so, yeah, we worked very hard to curate our culture as much as we curate for our clients. It’s very kind of you to notice that Gail. It’s a hard thing to create though. You know, it’s it, we had a culture expert that we talked to and he said, it’s your operating system. You don’t always feel it, but it’s happening and it’s how the, how it works. Right.

Has that been your experience? gosh. Yes. And, it’s really interesting and kind of an interesting intersection for us because we’re a hundred percent virtual and we have been for 15 and a half years. So that’s crazy. That’s way we’ve operated. just, I mean, I have already done the having an interior design office and I don’t ever want to go back there again. I feel every part of that. And my husband has been like, don’t you want brick and mortar? Don’t you want them?

Absolutely not. You know, you may see this cute little top, but I have leggings on underneath this desk, right? Like I don’t feel the need. I love you, Gail. We were so close on the same page. I just don’t feel the need to have to get dressed up and drive to an office to feel like I’m going to be a more productive person. And it’s interesting because my husband and I have debated this quite extensively and he’s like, but how do you create a culture? How do you know if people are performing? And I said,

I think it’s way easier to know if they’re performing remotely because things are either getting checked off and your project management software and deadlines are being met and we’re on standup calls every morning with the project update or they’re not. You’re exactly right. Yeah. I don’t know. Has that been your experience? Yes, absolutely. Our team is, they work hard. Agreed. very, very hard. And we talk about culture a lot. That’s a really big deal for us.

And I just think that that’s so important, but I really want to come back. And now that I know you’re virtual too, this is so cool. And you run a good sized company at this. I think that it is something that I’ve struggled with trying to explain to other designers why they should consider a virtual or having a partial team. You can do it. it’s not, they have the story in their head.

that you can’t make the selections because you don’t have the library. Well, guess what? Almost everything is being sourced online anymore. And if you need something, you order the sample. So you can literally do anything you need to do with Zoom and your computer. And you can be on the beach if you want to. Yeah? preach. I wish I could highlight, italicize, underline, and bold what you just said, because it is the total gospel truth.

And I think it’s interesting that there is still pushback about it. was just coaching, or was a discovery call with a coaching client who I’m gonna see next week. And she is a doll. She has four locations within a five mile radius and her operations manager put us on a discovery call together to say, we started out, it was just my husband and I, it was great, it was fabulous. Now I four locations and I think I might have too much overhead. And I’m like, sister. Yes, you do. You do.

I’m like, we’re gonna have some hard conversations next week. But like, I get that people want a sign, there’s this grandeur and there’s a sign and there’s a designated location and there’s a spot. I get it, but like at the end of the day, to turn on all those lights, create all that water, provide all those paper products, get the janitorial step. I just don’t get how the juice is worth the squeeze. I really, really.

I’m with you. I just don’t understand. And I love that this woman has been successful enough to open four locations and she’s better exact words where I have more locations and more people than ever, but my profit margins are smaller than ever. Yeah. Well, here’s a shocker. I was looking at some of the industry data and guess what the profit margin was on the average for interior designers last year. I’m so scared to know this number. Zero. Zero.

What Gail? You’re blowing my mind. Are you kidding me? Why are we doing it? Well, especially in the million to two and a half million. If you talk about the overall industry, it’s 3%. In the year before that, it was around 5%. And it just keeps going down. So, you you have to really look out where is your money going? Is going to the people or is going to your office? Those are the two biggest expenses. Yeah.

is a hundred percent. That is so startling to me. It’s so scary because those are all the designers I just want to pull in and coach, coach, coach, coach, coach, coach, right? Because I always- this out there, right? Right? I’m just saying. Because we always talk about, want a 40 to 60 % profit margin. That’s what you should be netting out on every project. And if you’re not, when we go through that P &L, we got to talk.

We really have to talk, but I do think a lot of it though, we know our industry is dominated by women. And I think as women, it’s easy for us to say, I’m being nice. Cause I won’t mark that up as much. They’re an easy client. Why? or I’ll just do this as a favor to a friend. Is that what your doctor never, never, never. Right? I’m like, there’s a full price for your friends. Your friends are.

going to be your hardest clients to work with. Yes. Cause they think they have access to you after hours. Right. And the reality is you’re good at what you do. You should get paid to do it. You have years, even though like you shared, I don’t have a degree in interior design. It’s been a lot of learned and bumps and all the sorts of things along the way, but 20 years later, I’m pretty confident in what my team can produce and we’re going to stand on that. And that’s what you’re buying. You’re buying the team and all those brains working for you.

No, you brought up another good one. This is another one where this is a struggle for a lot of designers and they have this belief that you have to be the one involved in your projects or you’re the contact with all of your clients. Well, you can’t do that. You can’t scale yourself. And the only way you can scale your business is by having a team and you have to sell your team. And I’ve watched some of the most amazing designers.

just continue to believe that and they just struggle with not being available to all clients at all times and it’s just not possible. two thoughts on that. I will not regale your audience with singing Frozen, but you have to let it go. You have got to let it go because you will drive yourself nuts. My kids have this beautiful little kids book about Kevin the koala.

and he just clung to his tree and he would not let go and everything’s shifting. They’re like, Kevin, come down and play. There’s all this fun stuff. Kevin would not let go. And eventually they have to chop down his tree. And so he’s going to come down one way or another, right? But he couldn’t come down on his own terms to do it in the way he wanted. And then when he landed there and realized all the fun he was missing out on, it was a real epiphany for old Kevin the koala. But I think we see so much of that in the design world too. Like you’re going to fall, your tree is going to get cut down. Either way, this is going to happen.

Would you rather like set it up so this can sustain and your business doesn’t collapse and you don’t have to rebuild it? Or would you rather have a nervous meltdown? Cause that can happen. mean, one of the things I did when we grew and it has been a great blessing is I just separated my work phone from my personal phone. And every night there’s like this psychological component. I walk out of this office. Well, first I shut everything down.

and I plug in my work phone over at my charger right over there. And then I slide the door shut. It’s a barn door and I walk out and that’s it. And Rome can burn, but I’m not a cardiologist. I’m not saving lives out here. And I’ll see you tomorrow morning when I’m back in the office again. it especially with such a good boundary. just don’t have that issue that you do with residential. Another reason for you not to be in residential, right?

I know I always joke. I’m not the person to talk about. If you’re just like, love residential so much, Katie, you should try residential. I’m like, no, I can coach on residential. I did it. I know all the pitfalls of it we’ll talk about it. And I won’t try to talk you out of leaving it. But if you want someone to be like, Ooh, I love residential too. Let’s talk about kitchen and bath. I’m not going to be your girlfriend. We’ll get the business structured. So it doesn’t drive you nuts because it drove me nuts for three years. And now I can help you with that. but yeah.

I admire, like I said, I admire those residential designers because it’s fun when I coach them. I actually really love them because they’re like, I just really love my clients and I really love seeing them so happy and I love them being in a space that gives them a hug. And I’m like, that sounds so great. And I’m like, yeah, I could never do that. I really admire that you do that. Yeah. that’s so funny. Well, talk about your marketing journey. What has it taken you to build your business? that’s…

That’s complicated, Gail. It’s a really good question. For about 15 years, I taught undergrad and graduate courses in business and even designed marketing courses. And what’s funny is my business doesn’t always parallel what I taught my students. And mostly that was because I held back. So I’m a late to life mama. I’m a late to life getting married. I didn’t get married until three days before my 31st birthday.

And then I had kids, at 30, almost 35 and one at almost 38. So there’s days I’m in bed by eight 30 and I have no shame in my game about that because I am old and a tired mama. but I really wanted to wait until my youngest went to kindergarten before I said yes to interiors. That was one of my big goals because I started this business back in 07 with the hope that someday I would have kids and I’d be able to structure my lifestyle to make room for them.

Like I really wanted to be able to do that. I thought if I get the privilege to do that, I want to have the space and the time to do it. So for a number of years, it wasn’t until right before, was it in COVID that that happened where we turned on the tap to interiors. Our largest client came to us and said, please do interiors. And I said, okay, let’s do it. We’ve been waiting and we’ll do it. And that’s the year we grew 1500%. And it was a year.

Yeah, I was like drinking out of a fire hydrant, but I’d also had, this is kind of the weird part, because I’d had over what? 10 years to think about what I wanted this to look like and taught what this should look like. And then you do it. Right. But once again, it’s standing on the shoulders of giants. You find the right people and you put them in the right seats on the bus and then you let them do what they’re hired to do.

it’s not always that smooth. There’s been a couple of spots that are just boogers to get right. There’s always sticking spots. I don’t want you to think it’s utopia over here with unicorns, but that was a huge, huge growth year to be able to go to interiors. Marketing along the way has changed. We didn’t market a lot for the first 10 years because I didn’t want a huge business. wanted something that was just me because I didn’t want to have to scale. in fact, I just spoke to IDS about this, but when we think about scaling, we always think about scaling up.

And never do we think about what is effective communicative contraction look like and is that okay? And I feel like as women, especially we need to be given permission for that. Like, no, my business isn’t failing. I am choosing during this period to do X, Y, and Z of my life. And then I can ramp up my marketing strategies later, build a better pipeline, try different market segments, all of that, right?

But I feel like a lot of times we need permission. And that is like one thing I love, love to coach too, is you don’t need permission. Your business should work for you. You should not be working for it. And if you’re working for it and you’re on the verge of that mental breakdown and you’re taking all the texts and all the calls at all the hours for all the people, it’s not sustainable.

And some people might disagree with you because that’s what they’re used to. But let’s come back full circle to the marketing and let’s talk about what are some of the things you did to grow your business. Take care of the clients you have, number one. The best client is the client you’ve already got. So listen to them. If they have feedback, take it. It’s not personal. It’s really meant to be a growth point for you.

that take care of the people you’ve got. And that applies to your internal stakeholders too. If you have a team, take care of that team because that team will bring you new clients. That team, right? They’re gonna go out there and promote you. That team is gonna show up for you time and time again and be your best word of mouth that you’re ever gonna get. The other one is figure out who’s your target market.

Are you going after the bougie, bougie clients? Are you going after second homes? Are you in a heavy Virbo market, vacation rentals by owner, right? Figure out what your market segment is and run hard. If you’re trying to be everything to everyone, you’re nothing to no one. You just can’t do it. And so figure out what do you love? What do your clients love about working with you?

and be unabashedly, completely unashamed to go down that road and promote that heart. So for us, because we’re B2B, a lot of our social media gets done on LinkedIn. We go hard on LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram are more afterthoughts for us. Yeah, because that’s where our business segment is hanging out.

I’m trying to think as far as more traditional marketing because we’re a remote firm, it’s not like we’re doing flyers and because we work coast to coast, we’ll run 40 to 80 projects. So it’s not like we’re plugged in at our local chamber of commerce and have found our local whatever it may be that applies to our business. It’s more about being involved in the industry in which we’re working. So once you know the industry, if you’re like, I love restaurants, I love restaurant design. Okay.

Go join up with a couple of key restaurant industry groups. Go find out the people out there who building restaurants and go hang out with them. You know, I think that’s the key thing is just know your market segment. Know your target market persona and then go figure out where are they volunteering. Go volunteer there. Become friends with them. Show up with them and they’re going to show up for you. I don’t know. Has that been your experience as well? Sure. And I know when I was running my design firm, was

definitely involved in the community. was a huge part of it. Social media was just beginning right at the end of my time of doing design. So we really did not use social media. So that’s how we found our clients. Yeah. And it worked beautifully. I mean, how many years didn’t you run a firm that way? Right. a lot, almost 20 years. yeah, which is amazing. I think that’s so cool. Yeah, it was fun.

Well, how do you see AI coming into the picture for your company? I love that question. That’s a great question. I love AI. I’m an early adapter of technology stuff. Anything that I think is going to make life easier or better, I’m probably going to embrace. I have two Roombas in my house, one for each floor. I love technology.

AI has been great for us. We use AI for email responses. Sometimes you just don’t know how to word it to a client. And so we do. We use AI. We use it to help us with social media posts. I think it’s going to continue to be a bigger and bigger thing. We don’t use it, I should clarify, in social media posts. We use it not to create visual content. Our content is our content. And I do think that brings up an interesting point about the integrity and ethics of it.

You know, what are you putting out that you are claiming as yours versus what is AI generated? So we use it for a lot of text and content creation in that way, but not for visuals and not for saying that this is a project that we did. I really love the idea. The Wall Street Journal had a great article on this. I want to say a few months back, but how it really helps homeowners dial in the visual of what they’re looking for.

because they can play on that in a way that’s more significant than Pinterest because it’s interactive, right? Like, I really like that mantle, but I want a different ceiling or I really like, and it will do that in real time for them so that when they come to meet with you as a designer, they have a pretty good visual and then it’s the execution of it. Like, how do we actually bring these materials to life? There’s so many different softwares out there right now for designers that are starting to lean into this. It’s gonna be interesting to see where it goes, but I think it is something to be embraced.

and not be afraid of, because at the end of the day, they still need someone to do it. It still needs to be sourced. We still need to double check measurements. We still need to write, but for concept and idea, it’s so great to better understand what the client wants rather than them coming to you with a pillow or a Pinterest board that’s a dumpster fire of division. Anybody else seen those pictures? You’re like, you don’t know why you want, but this is cute. I think it makes it a lot easier on us for sure. I’d be curious what the feedback has been from.

your clients about that? think, well, we just did an industry survey and it was so interesting how few people would answer the question about AI. And you know what that tells me is that they don’t know and they don’t have any opinion on it. So I think that’s pretty fascinating because this is about 1200 people that took the survey. That’s That’s significant. And if only a handful of people answered the questions.

It tells me that there’s very little knowledge out there in the industry about how to use it. Which kind of breaks my heart because I think it is a really great tool and sticking your head in the sand is just not an option on this one. It’s not going away. mean, it’s becoming more and more and more dominant, right? Yeah. I just think that like that’s fascinating to me. And it tells me that there’s a lot more opportunity for education and use of it. But yeah, don’t be Kevin, the koala and

not be open to change, embrace AI, get out there, start Googling it. In fact, you’ve probably noticed if you use Google, it’s already creating auto gen stuff at the top and that’s all AI. mean, everyone’s using AI. your Google Gmail. Yes. Isn’t that crazy? Yeah, that just, I’ve started popping up in mine a couple of months ago and I use it every single day. I do it for every time I’m on a call. just.

start my granola and granola records it and summarizes the conversation, which is so great. Isn’t it amazing what it does and its ability to think and do and yeah, I mean, if you’re still typing emails, I’m like, I’ve told our team, if you’re typing an email longer than two sentences long, you’re wasting our time. Good for you. Go figure out how to use it. And so yeah, we pay for chat GPT, we pay for the upgraded version of it. And I’m like, get busy.

Like just put in your prompt. can be a complete dumpster fire, but it really helps protect our credibility too, which you’re like AI protector credibility, Katie, like tell me more because it’s getting all the grammar and the punctuation and all the problems ironed out that maybe one or two people on our team struggle with when it comes to looking reputable in a business to business environment, especially. And it takes care of that. And it’s a copy paste. I won’t say.

It’s a complete copy paste. It’s like an 80 20, right? Like 80 % there, 20 % editing, but I’ll take the 80 any day of the week. Well, okay. So you’re talking about doing communication with it and we’ve talked about doing it for taking notes, which is great. Yeah. And for doing social media, but what about design? Are you using it for that? We aren’t. Okay. We aren’t mostly because, and it’s not because we wouldn’t, if a client wanted us to, or came to us with a vision for it.

or whatnot, we have not gone down that road. I feel like we know our clients and our industry well enough that we know what they need, what they’re going to tolerate and where their budget is at. And so usually we get it there within the first or second time of design. Like we’ll design it. They’ll be like, these are the tweaks or that’s a complete dumpster fire, throw it out and go this way and we’ll hit it out of the park. That’s like, just cause we’ve done it so long. I don’t know that I feel a need for it yet. That being said,

It’s getting good. It’s getting so good and so much faster and more accurate that I imagine the next year we’ll head down that path. Well, I don’t think it’s going to be something that we can ignore because it just saves so much time. No. Yeah. Cause it’s very, very hard to really be able to iterate on things quickly. Whereas if you can do it through AI, that would be huge. Huge. And I think like you’re going to start getting the.

I’m thinking back to AOL, you’ve got mail and a little, right? Like, and you think about how far back that was and how there wasn’t the interconnectivity. And I’m like, just sit back and watch AI. It’s going to blow the internet out of the water just because once it starts linking to sourcing material, once AI does, and it’s giving, it can import spaces, then give you sourcing material. Then we can order it in. You can check, the rub count look right? Does the whatever, but.

Fundamentally, it gets you 80 % of the way there like it does with text now. It’s breathtakingly. I find exciting. Some people might find that alarming because I go, then we’re in a volume game, right? We can scale, we can grow. We’re not spending as many hours on these plans. I think for a lot of people, I’d be interested in your survey. Was there an opportunity for the people who responded to share if they were scared of it or didn’t use it? Why?

What did they share? didn’t say why they didn’t, but most people were not, they were actually, I think 75 % were pretty interested in AI and they thought it was very positive what it would bring to the industry. I think that the interest is there, but maybe they just haven’t taken the time yet. And it is, it takes time. You have to learn it like any new language. is a new language. But when you think about how quickly you can.

do things, then it makes a lot of sense. A lot of sense. And once you, I don’t know if you felt this way, but I’ll never forget. I was sitting at the bar with my kids and my husband’s like, you’re using AI. I’m like, a hundred percent we’re using it. And he’s like, yeah, you know, he’s more traditional. He’s much more traditional. He’s not an early adopter. And he gave me a prompt based on his work environment.

that was specific to his organization and he needed a historical paper referencing blah, blah, blah, blah. It needed to be three pages and it put it all in. Cause unlike Google, it’s kind of weird with AI, more information you give it, the better it is. So I wrote a nice little paragraph, the three pages that spat out were so good. goes, can you copy and paste and email that to me? And I thought, and here we go. But right. Like, so once you try it, think, especially for these others, designers, like once you try it, it’s so.

It’s like going from Hershey’s to Godiva, right? Like you don’t know Godiva exists. You’re fine with Hershey’s. Like Google’s been great. And then you get to Godiva and you plug in a chat GPT prompt and you’re like, I see now this is amazing. And it kind of becomes, it does, it becomes a drug. It’s completely addictive because you just start seeing those economies of scale and those efficiencies. Is that how it happened for you too? yeah, for sure. Yeah.

And I keep thinking about it and our team uses it quite a bit. And I still write things, but yeah, if I really need to do some research, I’ll just type in chat, GPT and see what it comes up with. And it’s better than Google because it’ll give you way more data, more information. Yeah, it’s great. It’s so good. It is. I, you know, I think that.

The other thing I’m picking up from this conversation is you have to be forward thinking. You can’t be doing things the way you’ve always done them. And, I think you need to look for the opportunity and do the things that other people are not doing. So right now, if some of the designers want to stand out from others, they want to make more money in their business. They need to use AI. So they need to get on board with it because this gives them an edge over many other designers.

And especially because your survey and your data shows that it’s not being utilized. I love Jeff Bezos was on a show a while back and he was talking about decision-making and how he scaled at Amazon. And he, the model he used, and I’m going to bastardize this, so stick with me, but the idea was you could walk into a room and if you can walk out of that room and not spend more than $500, then make the decision and don’t bring it to me because I can’t make all the decisions, right?

And I would say with AI, go down the road. How much of this can be reversed? Like don’t be afraid to try the next thing. And so we told our people, I’m like, guys, I’m not Jeff. You don’t get $500. You get like $200, but go make the decision. And if it’s going to cost the company $200, it’s not worth my time if we have to back out of it. And you intuitively know it’s the right thing to do. And do you know how many of those we’ve had to reverse so far? And how many like $200 expenditures we’ve had?

Zero. Zero. You’re totally right. Gail nailed it. They just needed the confidence to be able to know that they had the power to make the decision. And what doesn’t that change for you as an owner? Because now you’re not like getting asked, can I go to the bathroom? I mean, not that that’s what we getting asked, but you know what I mean? That little stuff that clogs up your day. All of a sudden they’re like, I can have up to $200 to make a mistake. That’s amazing. My number is a little bit higher in our company. I give it up to a thousand dollars to our leadership team.

Don’t come to me if it’s over a thousand. Yes, I want to know about it, but otherwise you can make the decision. yeah, I think that touches on a very important point, which is empowerment. And if you can empower your team to do things and make decisions 90 % of the time, they are going to do as well or better than you will. yes, that’s why you hired them. Exactly right. And if you’ve got the wrong people and you don’t trust them that much, then maybe

Maybe it’s you that’s the problem. I totally agree with you 100%. And like how, don’t know about you, but like when we started having those conversations, my blood pressure and overall happiness went, well, blood pressure went down, happiness went way up, right? Like, because all of a sudden you’re in a space then, or a head space, at least for me, where I could think more creatively again. And to your point about forward thinking,

I had the head space to forward think again because I wasn’t caught up in that minutiae. Well, that’s another important thing. This is where we have, we’ll make this our last topic, but the last topic being that you need team. If you have team, then you can do so many more things. You can grow your business, make more money. And a lot of people still have a fear around hiring because they’re looking at the expense and not what they’re making from having team.

Yeah. Because if you don’t have a highly profitable team member, then you’re doing something wrong. Yes. Repeat that again. I mean, really that’s 120 % true. And I think that we also have this propensity. We’re all creatures of control, right? It’s hard to let go, but you have, if you’re letting go to the right person for the right reasons, who’s proven themselves, let it go.

Like, and realize you are going to be your own worst enemy because your business won’t be able, it’s like a Pyrex container, right? When you’re trying to put the leftovers in from dinner and you’re trying to stuff it in there and it’s, it was, all over. You’re going to be your own worst Pyrex container because your business is going to want to grow and you’re going to need bigger space for it, but you’re going to be the one holding it back. And that’s a really horrible spot to be in. We’ve seen it, especially, when clients don’t have processes in their firms.

when they don’t have their business and their finances in order. But they’re so talented. It just kills me. I’m like, you’re so good at what you do. You just need these few minor tweaks, but you’ve got to be willing to let other people come in and love the baby you’ve created too, because you can’t do it all on your own all day. You will fall flat. So how do you build a sustainable model? like you ran your firm for almost 20 years, and now you’re doing this, which is amazing.

Right. You’ve been in the industry for how long? Because you built a sustainable model. Yeah, a lot longer. It’s okay. We won’t ask for years, Gail. my gosh. It’s so good. Yeah. I mean, it really is about sustainability and also expansion and contraction. And realizing growth doesn’t have, it’s not linear. It’s not a beautiful little graph that they show you on Google. It ebbs and it flows. And some of that is market driven. Some of it’s you driven based on where you’re at with your firm.

But either way, I think you’re dead on. You’ve got to have the team to support you and back you and work when you need a moment to take a break. It still keeps going because it’s a machine and you’re not the only cog in the wheel. Absolutely.

That’s why I got to go on my trip and not get to see the Northern Lights. It’s okay. You come visit anytime, Gail. I’ve got lots of them up here. I promise I will. So we always take you to dinner. There you go. So let’s end of the podcast with the three things that you’d like to give us takeaways for our listeners. Don’t be afraid to let your business expand and contract. You’re still in control. You’re not failing.

Your business is working for you rather than you working for it. Figure out who your market segment is. Number two, who are you going after and go after them with reckless abandoned. Like I said, if you’re trying to be everything to everyone, you’re nothing to no one. And number three, do some sit in the seat of your intuition. Do some self introspection. What is your happy place? What is the place that you think

Man, I could build a sustainable model out of that. I’m an introvert. I don’t want to be out here talking to people and trying to run a firm. I want to be at my machine designing all day and space planning and sourcing. Awesome. But don’t be afraid to have the hard conversation with yourself of where is your happy place and then run after that too. That is terrific. And thank you for those great insights. I think those are great, helpful tools that will maybe spark some interest and some thoughts.

in our listeners. So thank you for that. and thank you for sharing that data with me that those are so many good data points that speak to our industry and where we’re at and our ability and need to grow in some areas, which is a really beautiful opportunity. Absolutely. Well, thank you again for being on the podcast. And it was a pleasure spending time with you. Thank you, Gail. I’m humbled and honored to be here.