On the show today I’m happy for you to meet Polly Williams, the founder of Camberyard. The designer’s advisor! Polly offers bespoke interior design business solutions and mentoring to creative professionals across the industry. She can advise you what your USP, promote your talent and make your business reach its full potential. Her expertise includes launching new brands, streamlining and expanding your current business, mentoring designers, PR, brand partnerships, social media strategy, fee negotiations and making introductions within the industry. Polly has over 12 years of experience advising an interior design studio in London.

Show Notes:

• What is Polly’s 360-degree approach?
• What are some of the first things she talks about when a designer wants to start their own firm?
• How does she help lay the foundation of a business?
• Has she ever had to tell someone maybe they need more experience before having their own business?
• What are some other ways she works with clients besides setting up the outline of the business?
• How are the packages set up for her mentoring services?
• How does she help her clients with time management?
• How does Polly help a designer figure out their unique selling point or USP?
• Does everyone have a unique selling point?
• How do you determine what is appropriate to put on social media?
• How does a designer figure out their brand?
• How are colors and fonts used to determine the message the business is trying to give?
• Why did Polly decide on the name Camberyard instead of Polly Williams Consulting?
• Does a business need to have a logo?
• Make sure to go out and network and plant your seed!
• What does Polly mean when she says think globally, act locally?
• Is Polly available to work with clients virtually?

For the rest of the show notes, please visit our 

resource center:  Window Works 

I am so pleased to have Mark Cutler and Heather Gillette with us on the show! The information that they are going to share today will maximize yours and your staff’s productivity in a way you previously could not imagine. Heather is a tech person and has been specialized in early tech startups for the past twenty years. She will explain that there are never enough resources, so you need to be creative and innovative to keep up with the amount of work. Heather founded and headed up several departments of YouTube. With little manpower, she and her team kept YouTube legal and clean while processing millions of videos and user communications every day. Heather wanted to bring this same thinking and make interior design more accessible. This is when their first company was born: NousDécor. 

Mark Cutler is an Australian-born interior designer. Mark is one of the Robb Report’s top 40 firms in the country and a leading proponent of interior design as a form of portraiture. He is formally the resident designer for A&E’s TV Makeover Mamas. He has many celebrity clients and his work has been in many leading interior design magazines. He currently serves as the Chief Design Officer at NousDécor.

You can read the show notes and access all the links and resources at https://www.windowworks-nj.com

In this episode, the first of a series of 3 shows,  Shauna Lynn Simon, Owner/Founder of Beyond the Stage Homes and Styled, Listed, and Sold (SLS) Academy, talks about a strategy for connecting with your avatar (target clients/audience) on a personal level. She talks about the important steps, procedures, and pointers – the checklist to ensure the effectiveness of this strategy – holding workshops. It can be a powerful lead generation tool to build your brand and business. The success of the event could depend on how well you have prepared for it.

Show Notes

• Choosing an engaging topic, and framing an attractive title
• Educational and specific topic would be an ideal choice of topic
• Choosing the right venue – inexpensive for a small audience, and a bigger venue or a showroom for a bigger audience, without sales pitching
• The key to selecting the right venue
• Content creation – valuable, informative, helpful
• What to give away as handouts
• Presentation techniques
• Inviting guest resource persons
• Securing sponsors
• Marketing and promoting it in social media – fill every seat
• Techniques in social media promotion
• Shauna Lynn will cover other related topics in the forthcoming 2 weeks: 
  • Determining who your community is and how you fit into that community
  • Determining what you can contribute to the community to make it better, bigger, etc.
  • Identifying your voice and connecting with your followers, clients, fans with that emotional connection

You can listen to the full episode at our resource center:  Window Works

We have our first request for an interview from a listener of the show! Lauren Clement comes from an interior design family! Her mother has had her business since Lauren was two and now Lauren has her own business, Lauren Nicole Designs. She is going to share with us how she runs her business and tell us about the people she has on her team.

Show Notes:

• Who are her mentors?
• Who is on her team?
• When should you consider a new hire?
• What are Design 101 events?
• A WWII airplane hangar design?

For the rest of the show notes, please visit our resource center: Window Works

For the past 8 or 9 months, we have had designer after designer talk about something that they are passionate about and turn it into a guiding force to increase business in their design firm. But I have not met anyone who has a design that is cruelty and vegan free…until now. On the show today is Deborah Rosenberg, a writer, lecturer, and founder of DiMare Design in Miami Florida.  DiMare is an interior design firm that promotes the use of vegan, organic materials. She will never use any materials that involve the harming of animals and she educates her clients, suppliers, and the entire industry about the advantages and benefits of cruelty-free/vegan design. She has incorporated her family values in her design business.

Show notes:

• Why and how Deborah started focusing on this niche. How did this become a big part of her designs?
• What does vegan mean?
• The sweet reason why she is so passionate about using “humane interior design”
• Leather manufacturers skin dogs to produce dog leather?
• How long she has been in the design business and her niche
• What materials she substitutes for animal-based leather
• What materials she uses to substitute for chemical-drenched materials
• Deborah is an animal activist with PETA. What she does for the organization
• What she uses for wellness, healthy design especially for allergy sufferers
• What are the desirable alternatives to leather, down, wool, and silk
• Do clients find her now because her design is vegan?
• It’s all about educating!
• What fabrics are ok?
• What is 72-hour turnkey design?
• What other services does her firm offer?
• Be as detailed as possible!
• Where she sources these materials
• How she charges for expedited service

For the rest of the show notes, please visit our resource center:   Window Works

Window Works features Asler Valero, a  Venezuelan-American interior designer with projects in the Caribbean, South America, and Europe. Asler’s work has been greatly influenced by Stephen Sills Associates and Uniford Design Studios with whom he had collaborated on residential and commercial projects around the world. Asler is also recognized as a color expert by paint companies around the country, several of which he serves as consultant to.

Show Notes

• What are the design lessons Asler learned at Sills-Hunniford Dwellings
• The most important design element for Asler 
• The purposes behind his choice of design elements
• The reasons behind his choice of color schemes
• The reason why he is very organized and precise
• His tips on learning
• His tips on the value of styling a room for photography

The rest of the show notes are in our resource center: Window Works 

Have you heard of Chairish yet? If you haven’t yet I am so happy to introduce you to this brand and Anna Brockway: one of the founders of this brand! Listen in to Anna’s story of how she started her company only three and a half years ago and it already has 150000 items available on the site

Show Notes:

• What is Chairish?
• Why did she start the business?
• What is the Chairish pink book?
• Is it a business or a feature?
• Research the market!
• What kind of special features does the Chairish site have?

For the rest of the show notes, please visit our Resource Center— Window Works