CEO Conversations with Kate O’Hara: Stop Defending Your Pricing to Your Clients

Episode 1219 of A Well-Designed Business®

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1219: CEO Conversations with Kate O’Hara: Stop Defending Your Pricing to Your Clients

Today with Kate O’Hara:

Kate O’Hara is back on A Well-Designed Business, and if you have never heard our past conversations with her, go find them after this one. They are some of the most listened to episodes in this catalog.

This time we go straight at the conversation that makes emerging designers freeze. A client asks to see your trade invoices. A client asks what your markup is. And instead of feeling entitled to run your own business, you feel like you have to defend it.

Kate spent 20 years at O’Hara Interiors, nearly 10 of them as CEO, before she made the deliberate decision to close a business she built across studios in Minnesota and Texas and start Lake House Group, her advisory practice for founder-led and second-generation companies. She has trained more designers on how to have this exact conversation than almost anyone in the industry.

Here is the reframe that changes everything. When a client asks about your markup, they are not asking about money. They are asking if they can trust you. When they ask why something costs so much, they are asking if it is a smart decision. When they ask why you chose a certain vendor, they are asking whose interest you are actually protecting. Once you hear it that way, the defensiveness goes away and curiosity takes its place.

Kate walks through exactly how she handles it in a discovery call, why the questions almost always trace back to a client’s past experience with a designer, or no experience at all, and why she is willing to walk away from any project, no matter the size, if it does not feel right from the start.

From there, the conversation moves into the mechanics you actually need. Flat fee versus hourly, and the different way you protect a meeting from scope creep in each one. Retail pricing versus trade pricing versus sourcing something truly one of a kind, and why what you share with a client shifts across each one. How to present an investment as a range instead of a single number, then narrow it room by room so the client feels informed without feeling gouged. And why breaking a final bill down item by item, even when the total never changes, can quietly talk a client out of loving what you designed for them.

Kate is also now co-owner of the Design Influencers Conference alongside Nicole Heymer of Glory and Brand, happening March 1 through 3, 2027 in Atlanta. And if this conversation told you what it told me, that Kate is one of the sharpest minds in this industry, you can book 50 minutes with her directly through the Boardroom for Creatives.

More About Kate O’Hara:

Kate O’Hara is the founder of Lake House Group, an advisory practice that helps founder-led and second-generation businesses navigate growth, operational blind spots, and transitions. She previously served as the second-generation CEO and Creative Director of O’Hara Interiors before intentionally closing the prominent design firm to focus on advisory work and co-owning the Design Influencers Conference. [1, 2, 3]

Connect with Kate O’Hara:

O’Hara Interiors Website

O’Hara Interiors Instagram

Lake House Group Website

Design Influencers Conference Website

Design Influencers Instagram

Fay + Belle Website

Fay + Belle Instagram

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