A Well-Designed Business® | Interior Design Business Podcast
In today's world being a talented interior designer isn't enough to ensure that you have a profitable and successful business. Design school curricula doesn't always equip you with the business skills to have your interior design business be everything you imagined it would be! A Well-Designed Business® is here to fill in the gaps and give you real live business skills from some of the top interior designers. Your host, LuAnn Nigara shares her 40 years of success in the interior design industry, and she finds the most successful guests to share their interior design business best practices. This podcast is s...
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1173: Bri Ussery: The Relationship Between Order and Meaning
<p>Today With Bri Ussery:</p> <p>Today with Bri Ussery, we’re talking about a topic most of us think we’ve mastered but probably haven’t: communication as operational infrastructure. Bri, a strategist and fractional COO for interior design firms, explains why even the most well-built systems fall apart without clear, intentional language supporting them. From weekly update emails to onboarding decks to meeting notes, she shows how the words you use either reinforce your authority and stabilize your projects or quietly create ambiguity, scope creep, and timeline wobble.</p> <p>If you’ve ever said, “But it was in the...
1172: BEST OF SHOW: Jessica Matteson: The Client Experience Is #1 in Design
<p>Today with Jessica Matteson:</p> <p>Welcome to A Well-Designed Business. Jessica Matteson started her business with lots of experience but little time and money to invest in getting Jessica Matteson Landscape Architecture off the ground. Jessica shares her journey from starting with just $35 in advertising postcards to running a successful luxury landscape architecture business.</p> <p> Pick it apart:</p> <p>[14:28] Jessica shares her onboarding process in detail</p> <p>[18:12] Jessica gives a tip on how to handle a client introducing new wants in the middle of a project</p> <p>[22:78] Jessica shares how she broadens the scope of...
1171: Jenna Gaidusek: AI Ethics for Interior Designers: Protecting Your Clients and Brand
<p>Today With Jenna Gaidusek:</p> <p>AI is not going anywhere.</p> <p>But how you use it inside your design firm? That’s a leadership decision.</p> <p>In this follow-up conversation with Jenna Gaidusek, we move beyond what AI can do and dig into what it should do inside your business.</p> <p>Because here’s the thing:</p> <p>Ignoring AI is not leadership.But using it without standards? That’s not leadership either.</p> <p><br></p> <p>In this episode, we talk about:</p> <p>What is absolutely off-limits when using AI</p> <p>Why up...
BEST OF SHOW: Meryl Santopietro: How to Re-Invent, Re Vitalize Your Firm, Even After 20 Years
<p>Today with Meryl Santopietro:</p> <p>Welcome to A Well-Designed Business®. Today, I’m thrilled to have Meryl Santopietro. She is going to be sharing with us about her career and her decision to move her business to Manhattan. Meryl’s business was based in Rhode Island until she moved her business to Manhattan. She also has the pleasure of working with her two daughters every day.<br></p> <p>More About Meryl Santopietro:</p> <p>SANTOPIETRO INTERIORS is a family design firm based in New York City and Rhode Island, that is highly sought after for their diverse, exper...
1169: What Would Lu Do?: Now That It Works, Lead It
<p>Today With LuAnn Nigara:</p> <p>A Well-Designed Business® 10-Year Anniversary Series, Part 5</p> <p>What happens when your business finally works?</p> <p>The referrals are steady.The revenue is consistent.The team exists.</p> <p>For many entrepreneurs, this is where survival ends.</p> <p>But it’s also where drift can begin.</p> <p>In Part 5 of the 10-Year Anniversary Series, LuAnn shares the leadership shift that happens after stability. Through a pivotal story from her early years at Window Works and a transparent look at her recent recalibration of the podcast itself, she unpacks what it...
1168: Christa O'Leary: How Psychology Transforms Client Communication and Satisfaction
<p>Today With Christa O’Leary:</p> <p>Today with Christa O'Leary, we explore how her background in psychology and marriage and family therapy completely transformed the way she approaches design. Christa shows us that great design isn't just about aesthetics, it's about creating environments that support wellness, help clients thrive, and make them feel how they want to feel when they walk through the door.</p> <p>Ever feel like your design work would be even better if you truly understood the people you're designing for, not just their style preferences, but how they really live, what they struggle wi...
1167: What Would Lu Do?: When Your Business Starts Working… Now What?
<p>Today With LuAnn Nigara:</p> <p>When your business starts working, everything changes.</p> <p>In Part Four of the 10-Year Birthday Series, LuAnn shares the shift that happens when success creates complexity — and why growth without structure leads to burnout.</p> <p>What began as one microphone and one clear promise eventually became something bigger. More responsibility. More demand. More opportunity. And with that came a critical realization:</p> <p>You don’t scale by saying yes to everything.You scale by designing intentionally.</p> <p>In this episode, LuAnn walks through how A Well-Designed Business® evolved from a pod...
1166: BEST OF SHOW: Marie Flanigan: Leveraging Relationships and Making Decisions in Interior Design
<p>Today with Marie Flanigan:</p> <p>Welcome to A Well-Designed Business®. Today, I’m thrilled to have Marie Flanigan back on the show. Marie has more than a decade of experience as a thriving designer, one whose list of accolades goes on for days. In today’s episode, Marie is answering questions from listeners about how to make big decisions in your business— how to attract the clients and projects you truly desire, how to strategically market, how to handle client expectations, and more!</p> <p><br></p> <p>LuAnn and Marie Flanigan’s Ah-Ha moments:</p> <p>“I think it’s...
1165: Megan Dahle: A Four-Part Framework for Making Sense of Your Business Numbers
<p>Today With Megan Dahle:</p> <p>If your books are clean but your decisions still feel heavy, this episode is for you.</p> <p>My guest today, Megan Dahle, is a fractional CFO for creative business owners, and she has a unique way of helping entrepreneurs understand what their numbers are actually telling them without shame, overwhelm, or judgment.</p> <p>In this conversation, Megan shares her four-part framework for looking at your business numbers in a way that supports better decisions, calmer leadership, and long-term sustainability. We talk about the difference between historical information and future insight, why...
1164: WWLD: When Responsibility Became Stewardship
<p>Today With LuAnn Nigara:</p> <p>In Part Three of the A Well-Designed Business 10-Year Birthday Series, LuAnn moves the story forward into the phase almost no one prepares you for.</p> <p>The moment when hustle stops being the solution.</p> <p>Not because the work disappears.<br> But because the work changes.</p> <p>By this point, the podcast no longer depended on LuAnn doing everything herself.<br> It depended on something else entirely.</p> <p>Stewardship.</p> <p>In this episode, LuAnn shares what happens when stepping out of the weeds doesn’t mean stepping away, bu...
