This week on the Creative Genius podcast, Gail Doby welcomes Elissa Grayer, the founder of Elissa Grayer Interior Design, for a deep dive into her 25-year journey from educational administration to luxury interior design. Elissa shares how she “made it up as she went along” before finding the professional community and coaching that transformed her firm from a seat-of-the-pants operation into a highly profitable, well-oiled machine.

Listen in as Elissa discusses the evolution of her firm’s structure and the “transition mode” she is currently navigating as she looks toward the next decade of her career. She defines the critical importance of financial transparency, revealing how her business achieved a dramatic bottom-line shift by gaining the confidence to charge her true worth and track every billable hour.

The conversation also explores the unique challenges of serving ultra-high-net-worth clients who may be demanding or entitled, and how Elissa maintains boundaries while delivering an outstanding, sophisticated experience. Plus, Elissa shares her perspective on the current “stagnated” real estate market in the New York suburbs and why she is looking toward hospitality and senior living as exciting new frontiers for her firm.

In this podcast, you’ll hear about:

The Volvo Project: How Elissa’s career began by managing a major renovation for her former husband, earning her a resale certificate and her first referrals.
The $800,000 Realization: A candid look at the financial impact of “making up” design fees before learning professional billing and forecasting methods.
Succession and the Next 10 Years: The special attitude required for a second-in-command to become a potential successor and the shift toward in-house design leadership.

If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full show notes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s14e6-shownotes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwHUiEthyuA

Episode Transcript

Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors.

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Welcome to the Creative Genius podcast, Alisa. I want to talk with your personal story and start there and tell us how did you get into design?

Well, it actually, I’m one of the ones who came to it very organically. I had been in education, had been teaching, and then was working on charter schools and decided, my then husband and I decided that we were going to combine two apartments on Riverside Drive in New York City. And so I was, taken some time off from work. I just had my second child and I decided to take on the project and I did.

It was a total gut renovation. There was a lot of work. took about a year. I was very involved in the design, the layout, everything, and getting the job done, which as you know is really most of the job. And at the end of it, we had a beautiful apartment, and it just felt really good and comfortable and warm and welcoming, and everybody loved it. I loved it. Shortly after, I got divorced.

which was a very mutual thing. So we both were in a really good place about it with each other. We are still great friends. And he asked me if I would design and manage the joining of two apartments for him, for him and the girls who were my girls. So of course I said, yes, this would be a great thing. I’d love to make a wonderful home for them and for him. And he said, okay, I’ll buy you Volvo. And I said, okay, done.

I did.

I designed and project managed and filled that apartment with beautiful things and it came out really, really well. And I had to get a resale certificate number to start buying things, so I had a resale number. And then the electrician on the job said to me, I have a client who’s down in the village and she can’t make up her mind about something, would you come and help her?

someone else said, I heard you might be doing interior design, would you come and help me? And it just sort of snowballed like that. So I had no idea what I was doing, but I just knew I loved what I was doing. And then I decided to go to school to see if that would help. So I went to Parsons for a certificate in interior design. I already had a couple of master’s degrees. I didn’t want any more. And I just…

just was working. started working and I never stopped and that was 24 years ago. It be 25 years in February.

So what were your other degrees? I didn’t know that.

Well, I had a degree in administration planning and social policy from the Harvard Ed School. Then I had a degree in elementary education and master’s from Leslie College, Graduate School of Education. And then I was ABD, which means everything but the dissertation at Columbia. I was getting a degree in educational administration at Columbia Teachers College. So that was…

A lot of schooling, I’m a big believer in school, but I just didn’t want to do anymore. So there’s a lot of stuff I did not learn and a lot of stuff you can only learn on the job. So it’s kind of a toss up. I miss not having worked for someone. I know that that’s an amazing experience and I always lamented the fact that I never had a role model or anyone to just look at and say, that’s how you do things.

So I just kind of made it up as I went along.

I hate to say it, but one of the people would probably not be good role models on running the business. Yeah. So it’s in some ways, I think it’s better to figure it out for yourself, but.

That’s true. Yeah, true.

Maybe if you have a background in business, which as you know very well, I do not. I’m a liberal arts person through and through. So I know we’re going to get to this, but it really wasn’t until I met you that I started understanding the business part of the business. Before that, I was just flying by the seat of my pants. There was no internet world back then to go to. mean, now you can basically buy a business plan.

on the internet for a couple hundred dollars and sign up for a coaching group. It just feels a lot more open and accessible than it did back then. When I would go to the market days at the New York Design Center and basically listen for crumbs of wisdom from one of the famous designers who were speaking and I’d try and figure out what they were doing. yeah, just had to figure it out.

Well, tell us about your firm right now. Who’s on your team? What are their responsibilities?

Well, we are in a transitioning mode. The ideal team is, and it’s not ideal right now, so that’s why I’m starting with the ideal. The ideal situation is to have a leadership team that is myself, my design director, who’s my number two, and then have an operations person as a third arm in the group.

We do not have that person anymore. We had to make some staffing changes. So I now no longer have a real operations person. And what we have done is we have brought in a fractional CFO from outside to be kind of our financial advisory arm. We have brought in a bookkeeper, CPA, and we have an office admin right now.

Mm-hmm.

We’ve also brought in an outside marketing kind of AI focused consultant to help us with marketing and especially as it relates to the new changes with what AI is doing to our market and our SEOs. I’ve also got a consultant who’s working on our website and I have an outside tech support person.

because the operations person that I previously had did a lot of those things, some better than others, but was really kind of responsible for a lot of that. So I have now created a team of different people to kind of partially, almost all the way make up for that third person. I also have a full-time designer in the office. I have a

part-time designer who is in Boston who works remotely. We have an office admin person. And then I have two very fabulous interns who are coming in a couple days a week who do all those things like, you know, drop off this sample, pick up this product, know, do, you know, open the door for this vendor. So we have a lot of hands in the mix right

Yeah, it sounds like quite a few.

Yeah, it’s quite a crew, but it’s working. We’re making it work. We do need another designer, but we are we’ll get there. We’re just not. It’s hard to find a good person, as you know.

Yeah, you have to your time with that and definitely wait for that right person.

Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, we are.

So let’s go back to the past and this has been quite a while, probably seven, eight years ago that you started working with us somewhere in that neighborhood. What was going on with your business at that time? Why did you come or reach out to us?

Yes.

Uh-huh.

Well, I had actually been following you from afar from, I don’t know, it must have been, when did you start doing those podcasts where people could call in? Was that like 20 years ago?

I just got 18 years ago. Yeah. Uh-huh. Sure. I was at home.

Actually, I think, probably don’t remember this, but I actually asked a question on one of those things and you said to me some...

Billing Your Worth in a Stagnant Market (Elissa Grayer)