Running a thriving design firm is often described as one of the hardest jobs out there. If that's true, how does a successful designer not only manage the chaos but scale a business to attract the top one percent of clients and win industry awards? This week on the Creative Genius Podcast, Gail Doby welcomes Stephanie Kraus, founder of Stephanie Kraus Designs, to share her remarkable story of transforming from a national magazine publisher to the head of an award-winning interior design firm. Stephanie reveals how she leveraged her original career's organizational expertise to build a design business with consistent waitlists, making it one of the hardest—yet most rewarding—jobs she's ever undertaken. Listen in as Stephanie discusses the evolution of her firm, which shifted its focus to handling full home gut renovations and custom homes while navigating the unpredictable challenges of the industry. She defines what it means to be a "fierce" but caring businesswoman, and explains how her philosophy of being a fast action taker ensures her employees feel protected and the business runs smoothly enough to scale. In this episode, you'll learn: The key strategies Stephanie uses to attract and retain the top one percent of clients, often leading to multiple projects from the same high-level families. How her firm strategically uses AI tools like Midjourney to improve client visualization. Why her flexible, hybrid studio model is key to attracting top design talent. Three powerful, actionable takeaways for designers looking to grow their firms and achieve success. If you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full shownotes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s14e2-shownotes Episode Transcript Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors. Click to show transcript Well, welcome to the Creative Genius podcast, Stephanie. First, I'd love to start with your personal story. How did you get into design? Well, thank you, Gail. It's great to be here. Great to see you again and hear your voice. Okay, I started my business about 13 years ago. And prior to that, I was a publisher for a magazine and in the medical field. So absolutely nothing to do with design at the time, but I've always loved design, fashion, style. I think it's just in my DNA. So back in 2013, I don't know if you remember this, but design blogs were the thing. And I devoured them while I was at home with my kids when my children were little. Because when I had my first child, I actually had to stop working as a publisher. Because when you're a publisher for a magazine that's national, you need to travel. So I had to take a break from that. because both myself and my husband were traveling nonstop and something had to give. So it's sad to give up that part of my career, but it actually opened the door to another part of my life and a new career. When the kids were little, I did always know I wanted to go back to work and wanted to run my own business. publishing, believe it or not, was like running your own many company so i learned a lot about leadership and operations and i did want to open something for myself i felt like i definitely had that entrepreneurial bug and i combined that with my love and passion for design and i started my own company stephanie cross designs into the thousand thirteen specifically focusing on you know small projects and residential design And how I started was I started decorating my own home and started writing my own design blog, obviously with publishing as a background. I really liked to write and I thought I was pretty talented in that area. So I wrote my design blog, did my own house, and then things just took off. My first clients were friends and family, and then word of mouth spread and I haven't stopped since. Busy and have had wait lists since the day we opened. That is amazing. So what was your original vision for the business? In the beginning, before I had any grand plans, I just wanted to run an organized company that had processes and procedures in place, just as when I was a publisher, we had a very organized process. And what I wanted to bring into it was more of the creative side and a creative aspect that helps people live beautifully and comfortably. I never imagined it would grow into what it is now, but I feel like doing consistently good work, caring deeply for my clients, being an ambassador for them, and actually a translator for them among the team that they work with when they're building a house and designing a house for acting as a translator between the builders and architects and trades so that the client's vision can be translated into their dream home with the whole team behind them. And has your vision changed? 12 years is not a terribly long period of time, but I have a feeling things have changed because obviously you got into this business coming from the publishing world and then you start this and it's been very successful. So what has changed over time? When I first started the projects were a little smaller. Sometimes it was just furniture and other times it was a small gut renovation or you know kitchen renovation, bath renovation and the vision of the company now is we are focused mainly on full home, full home gut renovations and our whole focus is our clients working with clients who are family centered to create custom homes from concept to completion. And we feel like we're really lucky to collaborate with incredibly talented architects and builders who help us translate each client's dream into reality. Again, my vision for the company today is really concept to completion, helping a client. reach their dream home through not only beautiful aesthetics, but how they circulate and work through their home and flow through their home now and many years from now. We always like to take into consideration what stage they're in in life. No small kids. How does that translate from small children to teenage years, to college years, to when they have grandkids and also encompass all of the family events that take place in these homes and create a beautiful backdrop for our clients. That's great. Well, what are some of the biggest surprises along the way in running a design business? Because it's totally different than publishing, I would think. designing, running an interior design firm and being an interior designer is probably the hardest job I've ever had. I think it's the most detailed job and there are so many things that are out of our control. So I've worked in the publishing and the medical field and this is by far the hardest. The only thing we do control is our creativity and how we show up. So it took years to build a reliable team of vendors and trades, but once you have them, it's gold. But it's really hard not controlling the timing of the furniture, the damages that come with the furniture, the kitchen cabinetry that we designed, but we didn't create, we didn't fabricate. All of the things that encompass an interior design project that we rely on other people to fabricate, make, install to give the final product. And not having control over every aspect of that is very difficult. But what I've learned over the years is it's really important to work with trusted architects, trusted trades, and trusted builders. So we've been really lucky. That's great. Well, and I would describe you as a fierce businesswoman. Have you always been that way? I think so. Once I'm comfortable in a role or in a space, yes, I think I just like to set a goal and meet it. And you can't know everything. So if I'm uncomfortable in a role, if I don't know anything, I just lean in, keep learning, stay transparent with our clients and just do my best. Fierce doesn't mean loud. It just means consistent, fair, decisive, and caring. I think that's a great definition for fears and I think fierce is a good thing to go for. So and it's a great model that you have. One of the things I noticed when we were at boardroom retreat just a few weeks ago, I watched you do something really interesting and it tells me a little bit about your work style. We had everybody take an assessment for their business and it was pretty long. And during this time you were. you were answering the questions, but you were also executing actions. And you told me about this later. And I thought, wow, that's really fascinating. Because who would have thought that somebody would just immediately say, OK, well, I need to get into action on this and start executing in the middle of doing an assessment. So that is talking about fast action taking. Is that how you work normally? Yes, and I think that's instinctive for me. I think that just comes naturally. I've always taken action. Trust me, I do procrastinate with things like unpacking my suitcase and doing laundry. But for achieving a goal, making sure that my company, my team, my employees are taken care of, that I just do my best to try to take action. And in particular, I think what we were working on was insurance, you know, is my insurance up to date? Is my contract in place? Because those are the kinds of things that not only are really important to running a successful business, but also keep your employees feeling safe, make them feeling comfortable. I want them to feel when they come into their office every day that I'm protecting them, making sure that they have a job in you know, for many years to come, if you don't feel safe, if you don't feel comfortable, then, you know, how can you do your job effectively? Kind of interesting. I didn't even realize I was doing it. But if something needs doing, I just do it, handle it. Yeah. And I think that's what I was doing was I was emailing my insurance agent mid meeting just to review our policy. And I actually had added cyber insurance, which I didn't have before.