How Michelle Gage built the team that helped her escape burnout

Summary

Trade Tales Podcast Summary Episode: How Michelle Gage Built the Team That Helped Her Escape Burnout
Release Date: July 30, 2025
Host: Kaitlin Petersen, Editor-in-Chief of Business of Home

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of Trade Tales, Kaitlin Petersen delves into the transformative journey of Michelle Gage, an accomplished interior designer who overcame severe burnout by restructuring her business and building a supportive team. This detailed conversation offers invaluable insights into the challenges of entrepreneurship, the importance of effective team dynamics, and strategies for maintaining both personal well-being and business success.

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Michelle Gage’s Journey into Interior Design

Michelle's passion for interior design ignited early, inspired by HGTV and hands-on projects like refurbishing neighborhood furniture. Her dedication became clear in high school when she recognized interior design as a viable career path.

“I started collecting furniture that my neighbors would put at the curb and seeing how I could hack them and do different things to them to make them look really nice and beautiful...”
— Michelle Gage [02:31]

She pursued this passion academically, earning a degree in Interior Design from Virginia Tech, followed by an internship at Anthropologie’s corporate office in Philadelphia—her dream job at the time.

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Transition from Corporate to Freelancing and Starting Her Own Business

Despite climbing the corporate ladder, Michelle realized her long-term aspirations extended beyond her role at Anthropologie. Dissatisfied with the limitations and unaligned growth opportunities within the company, she decided to leave her corporate position without a concrete business plan but armed with numerous ideas and goals.

“I did a lot with Home Polish in there. In between time I wrote for Houzz a little bit, some apartment therapy, I did some freelance styling...”
— Michelle Gage [04:24]

Her initial freelance work provided financial stability, ensuring she did not take a step back financially despite leaving her stable corporate job.

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Experiencing Burnout and the Decision to Hire

By mid-2018, just a year and a half after officially launching her firm, Michelle faced severe burnout. Managing every aspect of the business—from finance and purchasing to project management—led to overwhelming stress and emotional exhaustion.

“I had poured so much into the business, and it just became bigger than I could wrap my arms around. I embarrassingly had, like, fits where I just was like, I can't do this anymore...”
— Michelle Gage [05:56-09:28]

Realizing that she could not sustain this pace alone, Michelle decided to revamp her business structure by delegating responsibilities and building a dedicated team.

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Hiring the Right Team and Implementing Systems

Michelle’s first step towards recovery was hiring, albeit her initial attempt was unsuccessful. She admits making a horrendous first hire by trying to duplicate herself, which quickly led to terminating that employee within a month.

“I was hiring for all the wrong reasons. I was hiring the right reason was I needed help. What I was looking for was another me, and that's not the right thing to hire.”
— Michelle Gage [11:24]

Learning from this mistake, Michelle refined her hiring strategy by focusing on specific roles that complemented her strengths and addressed her weaknesses. She emphasizes the importance of setting clear boundaries and implementing robust systems to manage the business effectively.

A pivotal moment came after reading "Rocket Fuel" by Gino Wickman, which helped Michelle and her husband define their roles as visionary and integrator, respectively. This clarity fostered better collaboration and reduced friction in both their professional and personal lives.

“It really coached me to say, he's the expert in that area. His job is not going to be enjoyable if you keep telling him how to do it.”
— Michelle Gage [31:58]

Her team expanded to include five key members:

1. Michelle Gage – Creative Director
2. Alex Gage – Operations Manager (Michelle’s husband)
3. Nicole – Senior Designer
4. Muriel – Junior Designer
5. Shay – Brand Manager

Each team member plays a crucial role, ensuring that responsibilities are appropriately distributed, and the business operates smoothly.

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Adjusting the Business Model and Billing Practices

Michelle identified that hourly billing was becoming unsustainable and unenjoyable. To address this, she shifted to a flat fee structure, aiming to eliminate the stress associated with tracking and billing hours.

“I got sick of sending hourly invoices... We've only for the past year done flat fee.”
— Michelle Gage [36:07]

While the transition to flat fees is still under evaluation, Michelle reports that clients have generally appreciated the simplification, experiencing less focus on billing and more on the design process.

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Current Challenges and Market Changes

Recently, Michelle has observed a shift in client preferences. Unlike the earlier pandemic period when clients were eager for full-service, comprehensive projects, many now seek more flexible, smaller-scale collaborations. This change poses a challenge to Michelle's business model, which thrives on structured, large-scale projects.

“A lot of our inquiries are stating that what we offer is a little bit too much for them... We want to give clients a say, but we have to guide them as experts.”
— Michelle Gage [37:59]

Despite these challenges, Michelle remains optimistic, emphasizing the importance of proactive problem-solving and maintaining team cohesion to navigate fluctuating market demands.

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Future Goals and Vision

Looking ahead, Michelle aims to:

• Maintain a stable, medium-sized team that fosters creativity and efficiency.
• Attract projects that align with the firm’s expertise and allow for creative fulfillment.
• Continue refining client acquisition strategies to ensure a steady influx of ideal projects.
• Achieve a balance between personal life and business growth, ensuring long-term sustainability and team happiness.

“I really want the inquiries are just at a steady state and we are just grabbing all the good ones.”
— Michelle Gage [49:06]

Michelle also expresses a desire to revisit and possibly integrate her earlier goals, such as developing the "COVID of Domino", reflecting her commitment to continual growth and adaptability.

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Defining Success

For Michelle, success is multifaceted, encompassing both personal well-being and professional achievements. She values:

• Creative fulfillment in projects.
• Maintaining a healthy work-life balance for herself and her team.
• Building and retaining a talented, cohesive team.
• Achieving business milestones that reflect her vision and values.

“When you interviewed me for the 50 States project, I talked about having a really great personal life and that being the measure of success. And it still is.”
— Michelle Gage [50:50]

Michelle emphasizes that a successful interior design firm is one where she can focus on designing while her team efficiently manages other business aspects, ensuring high-quality outcomes and sustained passion for their work.

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Conclusion

Michelle Gage's journey illustrates the critical role of team-building, clear role definitions, and adaptive business practices in overcoming burnout and fostering business growth. Her story serves as an inspiring blueprint for interior designers and entrepreneurs striving to balance personal well-being with professional success.

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For more insights and stories from industry leaders, visit Business of Home and tune into the latest episodes of Trade Tales.

Transcript

[Michelle Gage]

You hear jokes like, you can't expect your romantic partner to be everything. And it's like you can't expect one designer to know how to do every single aspect of this very complex and complicated business. There's just so many things that I trust my team to do and to do well. And that's not to say they're perfect. That's not to say that mistakes don't happen. They do. But there would be way more mistakes if I was the one doing everything Foreign.

[Caitlin Peterson]

Hi, I'm Caitlin Peterson, the editor in chief of Business of Home. Welcome to Trade Tales. We're back for season eight of the show, where I'll be talking to interior designers about the challenges, pivots, and perspective shifts that come with growing a design firm. My hope is that you hear your own why echoed in these stories, or an idea, or a way of doing business that sparks your own breakthrough. I hope it helps you realize that even when entrepreneurship feels lonely, you're not alone. My guest today is a designer who found herself fast approaching the point of burnout several years ago. In response, she threw herself into the process of remaking her business, overhauling backend systems and making high level hires in order to rekindle the sense of enjoyment that drew her to design in the first place. I can't wait to share it with you. But first, a quick update on our newest podcast. Hey designers. By now you've probably heard about Ask Us Anything. It's our new advice show, which airs right here every other Wednesday. In every episode, I'm fielding a business question from an anonymous designer and then tapping a former Trade Tales guest to offer helpful guidance. We've solved some great dilemmas so far and now we want to hear from you. What are the questions that are keeping you awake right now? Now, maybe you're struggling with pushy clients or crappy contractors or toxic employees. Maybe your questions are more philosophical about when to hire or how to get payroll right, or how to know if you need a coach. Don't worry, we're going to keep it anonymous. So if you've got a question that you'd like answered, please start the conversation by sending me an [e-mail] I can't wait to hear from you.

[Michelle Gage]

So I think I started thinking seriously about being an interior designer. Like many young millennials watching HGTV and seeing a lot of examples there and it really interested me. And I started collecting furniture that my neighbors would put at the curb and seeing how I could hack them and do different things to them to make them look really nice and beautiful and put them in my room or do things around my parents house. But it wasn't until high school that realized it was a job that I could pursue. That's the path I went down. And I wound up applying to like one college. I put all my eggs in one basket and had my heart set on a specific interior design program and never looked back.

[Caitlin Peterson]

That's Michelle Gage. She studied design at Virginia Tech and then secured an internship at Anthropologie's corporate office in Philadelphia. It was her dream job. But as she worked her way up the corporate ladder, she tried to envision her long term path and realized that it might lay outside the company.

[Michelle Gage]

I started to think, you know, whose job in the company do I want? Do I need to switch departments? Do I need to look elsewhere and get my toes dipped into some other area of this business? And there really wasn't a great fit for that because they're not an interior design firm. It was a great experience. But there were some things that frustrated me or some areas that I wanted to take take my career or my position that just, it wasn't set up for that. It was a good time to part ways and I didn't leave with a business plan. I had a bunch of ideas, I had a bunch of goals. I did a lot with Home Polish in that. In between time I wrote for Houzz a little bit, some apartment therapy, I did some freelance styling. You know, the one goal I had when leaving my corporate job, like the big goal I had was don't take a step back financially. Not one of those things. Things fully covered the salary I was leaving behind. But together they started to make up for that.

[Caitlin Peterson]

Freelancing helped Michelle leave her corporate career behind, but actually starting a design business took a little longer.

[Michelle Gage]

The pivot into my own design business was I really just started getting some inquiries on my own. I credit a lot to Home Polish because I would never have been able to get in front of those people that hired me for those initial projects without that matchmaking service that they provided. Certainly not as a 26 year old with no past interior design client experience. But it was when I started to get people reaching out to me outside of Home Polish. So I was like on the Houzz platform, I had a little website, I started a little Instagram account. So once people started to reach out to me outside of that, I started to take less through Home Polish and eventually weaned myself off of using them altogether.

[Caitlin Peterson]

In 2017. Michelle officially launched her firm. I wanted to talk to her about the book that transformed her approach to leadership, the benefits of hiring a brand manager, and how she educates clients on the cost of design.

[Alex Gage]

Taking jobs initially through Home Polish helped you kind of identify what you liked and didn't like. You said about how you bill, how you run your business, how you navigate project management. Where did you land when you opened your doors as your own business? Did you have a pretty clear sense of how you wanted to operate?

[Michelle Gage]

I did. So Home Polish billed hourly, which I liked and I saw as the path forward, Especially when you're starting out and you don't really know how long things are going to take. Hourly just made sense. We actually don't bill hourly now anymore, but that's only been of the last year. So for like, seven years, I, you know, was billing hourly, just like Home Polish. Home Polish doesn't have the interior designers do a lot of the project management and ordering. And that's something that just led to some unfulfilling and unfinished projects. So I knew that that was something I wanted to shed and not bring with me in the path forward. And then I think the other thing that Home Polish did was they sold really small increments of hours to clients, and that wasn't something I wanted to do. So implementing minimums and saying, like, we don't. And when I say we early days, it was still just me behind that way, yeah, we. Me wearing 17 different hats. We don't take projects of a scale smaller than X just to make sure that they're creatively fulfilling, because the client relationship can be wonderful. But it also can and usually is a little trying. And just figuring out how to keep it enjoyable is something that's always been at the forefront of my mind. It's something I really pay attention to with our employees as well. And it's something, you know, my husband works with me, so it's gotta stay enjoyable. Like, you know, so there are, you know, things you can put in place, buffers, boundaries to put in place to keep it that way. But I, you know, I mentioned I started the business technically in 2017, and by 2018, like middle of 2018, maybe a year and a half in, I burnt out real hard. I had poured so much into the business, and it just became bigger than I could wrap my arms around. And I embarrassingly had, like, fits where I just was like, I can't do this anymore, like, crying on the bathroom floor. And I am not a crier just saying, like, I need Help. I need help. I need help. Because, you know, I came from a world where there were many departments that ran the business, and I was the finance department and the photography department and client services and purchasing and hr, and I was. I was every department and I could not. I wasn't enjoying it anymore. From that point forward, I set a lot of processes and systems and boundaries in place to make sure that not only myself, but my team continues to enjoy it. Because I had something I loved since childhood, something I was, like, naturally drawn to, naturally enjoyed doing, and I didn't enjoy it anymore. Keeping it enjoyable is at the forefront of my mind at all times. There's a lot of different areas that we could do. You know, we could have our own warehouse. That doesn't sound fun. You know, we could do a lot of different things in the business as we've grown to have more control, potentially be more profitable. But if no one on the team enjoys that aspect of the business, we just strike it from the list. I don't want people dreading coming into work. I don't want people burning out on my behalf. And we're pretty passionate about keeping it as enjoyable as possible because there's always things we can't control and things we can't prevent. But I would like to be a buffer for as many of those things as possible.

[Alex Gage]

When you hit that wall in 2018, was that when you started hiring?

[Michelle Gage]

Yes.

[Alex Gage]

How did you come back from that? You know, you said you put a lot of systems and structures in place. What was the roadmap that you drew for yourself in that moment when you decided, I'm not going to be everything in this business?

[Michelle Gage]

Yeah. So it is. When I started hiring and I made a horrendous first hire. Okay. And I started to put in systems, I kind of kicked myself in the ass because I was like, you did this in your corporate job. Like, you set systems, you set processes. I came into a department that didn't have a lot of organization, and I put the organization in place. And I was like, if you're not going to do that for yourself and your business, but you're going to do it for another business, like, come on. So the first step was I took some time off. It was around the holidays, and I took a little bit of time that it's just like, I can't keep working on projects. I'm not inspired. You know, I don't have the right structure in place to take these projects. So I took some time off. And then when I was ready to bounce back. And that passion was coming back. It was all about setting up systems. I listened to podcasts all day long, and I just started collecting all of this information via podcasts. Articles, business of home articles, books that I was reading and deciphering between them, like, what was the relevant information for me, and just started to get passionate about the business side again. I've always loved business. I've, like, always had entrepreneurial type jobs ever since I was a kid. I've always loved that part of it. And I realized that that was part of what I was doing. And I don't think I saw that when I quit my job. I don't think I saw the business opportunity, per se. I just was like, I'm gonna be a designer now. I'm gonna put that degree to good use. But once I realized that I could marry the two together, I got excited again about doing that.

[Alex Gage]

I am gonna go back and just say, let's talk about that first hire.

[Michelle Gage]

Sure.

[Alex Gage]

What were you hiring for? Because I would imagine there's like, a little bit of, like, hiring out of desperation. Right. Like, I need help.

[Michelle Gage]

I was hiring for all the wrong reasons. I was hiring. The right reason was I needed help. What I. What I was looking for was another me, and that's not the right thing to hire. I mean, obviously you can. You know, hindsight's 20 20, but I.

[Alex Gage]

Was thinking, like, I need to duplicate myself.

[Michelle Gage]

Yes. But also someone that was a little bit more extroverted. Like, I remember specifically wanting to hire someone with, like, a fun personality because I thought it would keep it fun for me. I thought it would keep it fun for clients. And I was at this point where I was just, like, so exhausted and burnt out that I was like, I need to infuse some fun into this thing. But I made the absolute wrong hire. You couldn't have made a worse hire. Like, you couldn't. I couldn't have been a bigger idiot with that.

[Alex Gage]

How long did that relationship last?

[Michelle Gage]

A month.

[Alex Gage]

So you saw the riding on the roll pretty fast.

[Michelle Gage]

Yeah, I mean, after that, I made a lot better decisions and better hires that, you know, stuck with me for a few years. And, you know, some who have been with me for four or five years, I then got some, you know, good advice where the way you make a job description is you list out everything you don't want to do, and then that's what you're hiring for. So I've done that ever since the.

[Alex Gage]

So not the first hire, but the hire that replaced the first hire.

[Michelle Gage]

Yes.

[Alex Gage]

What Were you looking to offload first?

[Michelle Gage]

A lot of technical documentation. So that is something that I learned a lot in school but did not enjoy. So we did a lot of Revit and AutoCAD and drafting and dimensions and numbers. And I am a trained interior designer, but I don't enjoy that aspect of it. So that was something that I was looking to offload right away was the technical documentation.

[Alex Gage]

How did giving away that initial burst of work change your mindset as you kind of looked at your business with fresh eyes?

[Michelle Gage]

I think having the right first employee felt like a huge weight being lifted. Because when I was early days struggling with burnout, I felt so alone and I felt so in it by myself. And the first great employee coming in and taking a big chunk off of my plate, which was technical documentation, which is a huge part of our business, was really freeing. And I think more than anything else, it just gave me head space to do the other things. One of the designers on my team in design talks about transitions. We talk about how you transition from one space to the next and what that looks like. I always think about transitions in the sense of how you move from one task to another. You know, how do I stack my calendar in a way that I'm not coming from a big meaty client meeting and then immediately hopping on a call like this, for example, like giving yourself breathing room around the tasks that you're doing because so many of them are so big and important. And you know, I have two really fantastic design friends in the area and we text almost every day. And the other day I was saying to them, you know, we gotta give ourselves, ourselves more credit. We are managing an impossible workload. Like, and it's not even just client projects, it's just everything that you're responsible for. As a business owner of a mid sized firm, there's just so much to wrap your hands around, your arms around and there's a lot of competing priorities and there's a lot of decisions to be made that will domino effect into other areas of the business and that can just trip you up mentally. It creates decision fatigue, it creates burnout. So always trying to find time to take a step back. I mean, next week our office is closed down. We don't have clients emailing us this week. They're all on vacation. It's the middle of the year. Like it's a fantastic way to refresh your brain and reset things and then come back more inspired, more excited. And maybe you have a great idea over that break too that had stumped you. While you were in the office, but you were too close to it here almost.

[Alex Gage]

You said something that I really want to talk about. You called yourself a mid size firm.

[Michelle Gage]

Yes.

[Alex Gage]

So first of all, I want you to tell us how you got to be mid size. How do you define that? What does your team look like today?

[Michelle Gage]

Sure. So we're a team of five. It's myself, I take the role of creative director, so I'm the lead designer on projects, but really I'm providing creative direction for everything. Then my husband, who joined our team in January of 2020, is our operations manager and he does all of the finances, all of the logistics, all of the purchasing and procurement. He manages our installs. So we are able to split in that way. We read a really fantastic book, maybe a year too late, but read it twice called Rocket Fuel and it talks about this visionary integrator role. And once we read it, there was so much clarity because for that first year of working together, there was naturally like some headbutts. But a lot of that just came into like we didn't know who was responsible for what. And after reading it, it was so clear that I'm the visionary and he's the integrator and I can't do anything without him. And then on our team we have three fantastic ladies. We've got Nicole, our senior designer, who has been with us for a little over four years now. She is a fantastic bridge between Alex and I. She's very technical, she has a great design brain, but she also has this engineer brain which my husband's background is in engineering. So that's how he thinks and that's just not how I think at all. She is this fantastic bridge between the both of us and she can speak both languages, which has been huge for the business and our marriage, frankly. And then we've got, on the, on the design side, we've got Muriel, who is just like a whip smart junior designer. She creates all these connections between things that we may have overlooked. And she's like, oh, well, if you don't order that fabric with this fabric, then we're going to run into a lead time issue or the dye lots might be different. And it's just, she's just thinking through all of those operations things. So again, a great bridge between Alex's world and my world. And then Shay is our most recent hire and she is our brand manager. So she has all of these brilliant marketing ideas. She is running our social accounts, she helps attract press, she helps style photo shoots, which is great for Us and really just owns the kind of design adjacent world where she's in office. So she sees all of the stuff that we're doing as a design firm, but she's handling more of that messaging that gets put out to prospective clients.

[Alex Gage]

When did you start to identify some of the unique challenges of being a firm this size?

[Michelle Gage]

Our firm, like many, grew in Covid and one of the roles that we added during that time was this project coordinator role. It was a new role for us. We kind of made it up, made up the job description, but it was really focused on client services. We felt like we didn't want the amount of work we were doing to negatively affect any of our current projects in terms of the client client experience. And that role was really valuable at the time. It transitioned for us a little bit a couple years later into more of a hands on operations role that assisted Alex. And I think the person who had that role, she was great. She, she kind of cited though that the job sucked. Like the duties, like she always had to be the bearer of bad news. She always had to deal with the delays. She always had to deal with like breaking it to clients that like something wasn't coming at the time that we thought or breaking it to our team that like we have to file a claim on this item and now it's out of stock so you have to reselect it. So she had left after some time and we considered replacing her role but ultimately didn't and wound up instead bringing in a brand manager. In terms of our size now, I always thought we'd be like six and done and we're five and I feel like that's actually the sweet spot. There's a lot of people to manage as you add more people to your firm, which does again, take away from the design. So I always try to be really cognizant of are we feeding the beast by making, you know, these decisions of, you know, if we were to hire someone new, is that just feeding the beast? And do we not want to feed the beast? Would we rather instead of saying we need to take every project that comes our way because we have a high payroll, would we rather say we don't have a lot of team members so we can be a little bit more selective with the projects that we take on? And that always felt a little bit better to me. That second option.

[Alex Gage]

Can you tell me more about the brand manager role?

[Michelle Gage]

Sure. So I did have my eye on someone, someone that I had met through a friend who I had just, you know, thought Presented herself really well. She also does our discovery calls and our client intake. She doesn't just do marketing. We actually don't have that much to market. But she does do a lot of the client acquisition for us. So she takes our discovery calls and leads the client through the consultation process. But in terms of the brand managing and marketing aspect, I have always sought out our own pr. We, we've never had a PR firm. That may change, but right now we don't currently have a PR firm. And that was something because I had worked on the editorial side of things. I had kind of known what to pitch and what different outlets might be looking for in terms of a story and photography. And I had studied that also well when writing the stories that I wrote. So we operated without any assistance in that world for a really long time. And it was just me pitching projects and me emailing editors and connecting with people at in person events or on Instagram in an authentic way. And then it would lead to something which was really fantastic. But I just started to feel like it was taking up a lot of my time because I was the only one on the team doing it. So in order to bring in someone else, we, we created a role that was wrapped around doing client intake and marketing and the marketing side of things. It was tasks that I did and enjoyed but were taking me away from design to the point where it was felt like it might be a problem in the future if I wasn't as involved in design. So writing blog posts, I write some of them now, but my brand manager writes a good bit of them or she will come up with the calendar that we need in order to get a blog post out each month. I heard in Covid I heard, you know, when your chips are down, you never stop marketing. Like you always have to keep marketing. So I always wanted it to be a constant presence of in our business. And we weren't just marketing when we needed work and we weren't just marketing when we had good work to talk about that we were marketing consistently. And having someone focus on that that is not also focused on 50 other things like keeping everybody alive, fed and you know, covered by health insurance felt like a good, good portion of my job to offload to someone else.

[Alex Gage]

Have you felt the difference?

[Michelle Gage]

You know, it's tough to say honestly when she first started in the role. I definitely felt the difference. This year has been real weird and I can't hold that against anyone's role on the team or, you know, how they're performing in the role. It's just been a weird.

[Alex Gage]

The universe has been kind of weird.

[Michelle Gage]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, weird is being polite, but it's a funky year. I will say, I think what it has done consistently for us, whether it's consistently brought us more inquiries or brought us more projects signing, is yet to be determined, because the role's only been around for about a year. But the thing that it has brought is a little bit more clarity to our messaging. And they will reference blog posts or they will reference past projects in a way that they didn't necessarily do before. So they're coming to us a little bit more informed. And if they're maybe not even coming to her super informed, they're coming to me super informed. Like, by the time I meet them, they're like, yeah, I know, I know. Yeah, like, so that's been really helpful. Has it moved the needle? I don't know. Because there's the old trope with marketing that somebody needs to see something seven times before they make the connection. So are we in more places more consistently? Absolutely. But when we ask clients how they found us, they'll still say Instagram or Google. And I don't know that that's the first time they found us. Like, I don't know that they didn't find us in a local magazine and then follow us on Instagram and then call a year later and reference Instagram when really you found us in a magazine. I don't know.

[Alex Gage]

You'll never really know.

[Michelle Gage]

No. And we talk about that all the time. It's, like, hard to create metrics of success for that role. Because I. I can't fault, you know, someone in that role for almost anything that has to do with marketing. When we don't control how people respond to the marketing that we're doing and we don't have full insight when they say how they found us, we don't know if that's accurate or not.

[Alex Gage]

How are most clients finding you these days?

[Michelle Gage]

Well, they say Instagram and Google, but I don't know. Yeah, that's what they say. We. We have a form on our website that asks, how did you find us? And that's what most people say is like, I did a web search or a friend follows you on Instagram. That's the other tricky thing about Instagram. A lot of times, it's not necessarily that that prospective client has found us on Instagram. It's like, they say, my friend follows you, and my friend sent me your information. So it's not a friend. We've necessarily done work for or even spoken to, but they've been attracted to our work and passed it along. And that's where Instagram and marketing in general is just so tricky, because you could catch the eye of someone, and that someone may never hire you, but they may know someone who would.

[Caitlin Peterson]

Hey, designers. And back with another reminder to send us your business questions for an upcoming episode of Ask Us Anything.

[Alex Gage]

Whether you're struggling with how to get.

[Caitlin Peterson]

Clients to spend on art and accessories at the end of a project, or looking for the financial strategies that will help you level up, I'd love to help you find some answers. If you've got a question that you'd like us to tackle, please start the conversation by sending me an email@trade dealsusinessofhome.com.

[Alex Gage]

Well, you started working with your husband.

[Michelle Gage]

Yes.

[Alex Gage]

How did that happen?

[Michelle Gage]

My husband, Alex, was actually very supportive and encouraged me to leave my corporate job. So I was a little bit on the fence and waffling about it. I was like, I tried so hard to get this job. I do enjoy many aspects of this job. I would be a fool to leave. And he was the one who encouraged me to go with what, you know, my gut was really drawing me to do. He's like, just do it. Just do it. I support you. You can do this. So around the time of my burnout, we had bought a dump of a House in 2017, and it became a bigger project than we thought it would be. It was our second house. So we had experience in our first house with doing some, I would call them now, cosmetic updates. And then when we bought this house, I mean, anything, anything and everything was absolutely wrong with it. And a lot of our friends and family thought we were crazy. And at the time, we're like, we're not crazy. You're crazy. But looking back at it like it was, we took on way too much. It was more time consuming, more stressful, more expensive, more everything than we thought. But we got through it really well together. We were kind of fighting this enemy of the house together. There started to be glimmers in that process of, hey, we have complimentary skills. And we started to realize that in renovating this house. So starting late 2017 and into 2018, when I was starting to burn out, we started to see that we still worked really well together. No matter what was happening outside of the house, we still worked really well together on the house. So as I was starting to make some hires, the business was growing. I was starting to be able to put some systems in place and wrap my arms around some things. And we had kind of casually been talking about it for a little bit, but I had said to him one day, I really want your brain in my business. I saw him excel at his. He was a mechanical engineer. I saw him excel at his job. It's not fair that this company has your brain. I want it like my business wants it. And we devise a plan for him to leave. He left on, you know, fantastic terms in case it didn't work out, which, my lord, it almost didn't. But he quit in November. He gave his notice, I should say, in November of 2019. And there were whispers of a recession at that time. I don't know if you remember, but like, people were saying there might be a recession. And we're like, we got some money in the bank, it'll be fine. Looking back now, it was a laughable amount of money. Like, it was so stupid. But we were like, we got this. Like, we, we can get through this. And he. His like last day was middle of January 2020. And it sucked in the beginning. It sucked. It was the hardest thing I think we've ever gone through. It was immediately a little difficult to navigate communication. We communicate totally different. I like to think of a million things at the same time. And I'm very, very impatient, which I think is one of my worst characteristics. He's very patient, he is very technical and in my mind, a little long winded when he is talking about something that I find incredibly boring. So there were some communication clashes for sure early on, but those were like, all workable. What wasn't workable was when the entire country shut down and you weren't allowed to be in anyone's house and you weren't allowed to gather with your team and then go out into the world. And I was then responsible for like, you know, with his job. He had health insurance that we were both on. We were no longer on that health insurance. We did have another employee at the time. We were working out of our house at the time. And all of a sudden all of these certainties that were ripped from us. There were certainties that we expected to shed health insurance. We knew we were going to pay for that ourselves out of the business as opposed to his, his company providing it. But there were things that we could never have predicted and no one could have ever predicted, and they were all just kind of thrown at us all at once.

[Alex Gage]

And really early in that partner.

[Michelle Gage]

Yeah, and I mean, truthfully, and early in the business too. I was only A couple years in to having the business. So we thought we were making the best decision ever, and it was the absolute right next move for the firm. But it was quickly shown to us that it was the wrong decision. And now, years later, even a couple years later, it was shown to us that it was the right decision. No doubt the business grew in Covid, and we would have never predicted that, but for the first six months, like that whole summer, you. You were banned from being with other people. It was shown to us pretty early on that, like, we effed up and this was. This was the wrong move. This was, like, so obviously the wrong move. And that was some of the hardest, you know, those were some of the hardest few months that we went through. Now, on the other side of it, I absolutely am grateful that we made that decision, but it couldn't have had a rockier start.

[Alex Gage]

How does Gino Wickman help you turn things around?

[Michelle Gage]

Well, Gina Wickman. So I don't even know how I found this book. I feel like someone online recommended it. About a year after Alex left, I just started flipping through it, and I was reading it and my jaw was, like, literally on the floor. I was like, this is describing us, but we didn't know how to describe us. Like, this is describing our dynamic. This is describing both of our skill sets and where we're both weak. So there's, like, there's a test in the book to see, like, how much of an integrator are you? How much of a visionary are you? But in the first little portion of the book, you know, if you. If you want the Cliff Notes and you don't want to get into the whole thing, the first, you know, couple pages, it. It defines what the visionary, who the visionary is, and it talks about in the book how both are needed for a super successful company. So having those defined roles and defined ownership is what gives you rocket fuel.

[Alex Gage]

Is it just like a knowledge is power thing and you can now be more comfortable in your roles, or was it also instructive and sort of shifting some of the systems and processes?

[Michelle Gage]

A little bit of both. It's kind of like it validated a lot of what we had maybe seen but not written out and explored. But the one action that really came from it was talking about how you have to give ownership to each person in their role. They're the expert in that area. And Alex would never really trample on my ideas, but sometimes I'd be like, no, do it this way, do it this way. It really made me back off. It really coached me to say, he's the expert in that area. His job is not going to be enjoyable if you keep telling him how to do it. Your job is not going to be enjoyable if you keep interjecting in the world that you're not best at. So it really kept us in our lanes. And when there was. Not that we had, like, disagreements or didn't see eye to eye, but when there was an issue, it stopped needing both of our inputs. It was more like, okay, we don't have to tackle every issue together. And honestly, that was great for me. It was great for him in the sense that he didn't have me, you know, constantly breathing down his neck. But it was great for me in the sense that it gave me more headspace to design. And we always say, the more I'm designing, the better the business is. Like, that's the marker of a good interior design business is when I can design. We have everything structured well because everyone else is doing the parts that I'm not best at. I am best at design, but they can be the experts in their areas and allow me to design. And then we're firing on all cylinders. The trains moving on the tracks.

[Alex Gage]

How are you sort of setting clients up to work with your team throughout the process?

[Michelle Gage]

I mean, that's a great question. So first and foremost, I did tell my team, you know, I'm doing this podcast, and I was like, don't let anyone come poach you. Like, I'm going to talk about how great you guys are. I'm going to name you by name, and I'm going to be real pissed if after this, you get a bunch of people asking you to join their team. So when anyone reaches out, they know that they're talking to Shay. They know they're not talking to me. She's the one setting up the call with them, and she is the one who is walking them through, you know, the next steps in the process with my senior designer. Talking to clients. We have an initial kickoff meeting with clients in our office, where our team sits down with them to talk about, you know, initial design ideas and. And some look at some samples and see how the process is going to go. And in that meeting, both of my designers are present, but they're also the clients are handed a folder that has a bunch of information that they need about billing and expected prices of furniture. And, you know, the best ways to engage with an interior design firm to get what you want. But in there is also a sheet that has all of our team members Faces on it, their names and what they do. And I think just giving them the opportunity to speak directly to clients and be present in meetings and be on site without me. A lot of times they're on site without me. And that just allows the clients to have confidence in what they're saying, that I'm confident that I don't need to be there. There would be way more mistakes if I was the one doing everything. And so I try to look at it that way and say, okay, if this person made this mistake, like, how can we hindsight it? But in reality, if they weren't here and I had to do their job plus my job, I would be making 10 times as many mistakes. Or if I had to do the job that I'm not best at, that they're best at, like, shit goes off the rails. So it's not perfect. It's not to say that everyone is doing a perfect job and we have this dream situation. But I've had to let go and not hold things so tightly and let other people do what they're best at. Especially if you want to keep long term employees. Like, I can't imagine any employee, you know, my senior designer's been with me four or five years. They don't interview with you and think, like, I hope in four to five years I'm still doing the exact same thing they hired me to do. Like, they want to grow and you want them to grow because then the business grows and you have happier people around you. And that's what we strive for.

[Alex Gage]

You mentioned that you very recently started charging differently and I'm not going to let you get away without telling us about it. What changed for you?

[Michelle Gage]

Um, I got sick of sending hourly invoices. So we had been doing hourly for all of time and it didn't not work. But again, it wasn't something any of us enjoyed. Like, I didn't enjoy telling my design team, look for that, but only take 15 minutes because we have to like, keep to the hours that we've estimated. I didn't enjoy having conversations with Alex and saying, hey, we've gotta send this hourly invoice. Ooh, what time should we send it? Like, when? What, what day should we send it? When is it going to be best received? Are they going to push back on any of this? Hourly billing became an unpleasurable experience. And again, just seeking to eliminate the pain points in this business and the things that just did not make me happy to come to work every day, that was on the chopping block. So We've only for the past year done flat fee. The jury is still out if it is working. It's actually something we're going to discuss. Alex and I have biannual off sites. We're going to discuss do we think it's working? We're going to pull data and take a look and see if it's working or not. It worked last year. I don't know about this year. This year is a really weird year and the jury is still out if this year's working at all. Okay. But I have enjoyed not talking about it. I have enjoyed not fixating on the billing. And I think for the most part, I think the clients who have signed on to flat fee have also enjoyed not fixating on the billing.

[Alex Gage]

When you say this year is weird, is it just that the phone is ringing less? Is it just that? Is it that people are nervous? Is it that what they want is different? How has this year unfolded for you compared to some of the previous years?

[Michelle Gage]

So it's evolved a little bit. I think at the beginning of the year, it was. We weren't getting as many inquiries, but in hindsight, that happens kind of every January and February. People are definitely more nervous, definitely more cautious, definitely a little gun shy in terms of spending the amount of money that it requires to do some of this work. I mean, things are just way more expensive, too, so that doesn't help. But I think one of the realizations I've had with some of the inquiries that we've been getting as of late is a lot of people want me. And what I mean isn't like they only want to deal with me. I mean, they just want, like a solo designer who's maybe working out of her house and has lower fees and can go shopping with them. And it's just not the business model we have. So there's a lot of people who are at least saying they're super interested in working with us, but then they get to a point where they realize the full service nature of the business and they're like, that's too much for me.

[Alex Gage]

Interesting. And that's never happened to you before?

[Michelle Gage]

Not since COVID times, no. I think in. In, you know, 2020-2022, 2023, everyone was like, gung ho for the full service. They were like, yes, I want project management. Where have you been? I've had, you know, solo designers before that don't execute, and I need the help and I need the support, and I need you to take it to the finish line. And now A lot of our inquiries are stating that what we offer is a little bit too much for them. I just. I don't need that. And it's not necessarily that they don't want to do full rooms. It's just they don't want to do it the way we want to do it. They want to do it their way, and they want to follow their process, and they want to be able to have a more fluid relationship. And the relationship we set up with our clients is very structured, and it's very purposeful on what you can expect next in terms of deliverables and dates. And I think they want more of, you know, a budding designer, which is. Honestly, it's. It's a little tricky because I love the team we have, and we are so capable of doing big, amazing, complicated projects. We do them well, but not everyone's asking for them right now. And it's a little bit of a tricky situation where it's like, we absolutely love everything we've built, but if we don't have the right people knocking on the door, it questions, you know, if we've built things in the right way or if we have to, you know, unfortunately relook at things every few years, which we've had to do for the first few years just because of the pandemic and how things have evolved. And I don't want to restructure again. I don't want to look at things differently. So I'm hoping it's just a weird year, and it's just a fluke. And my designer friends that I've talked to have all kind of shared the same sentiment that it's. It's just a weird year, and you never want to react to anything too late. Like, I never want to be like, I have this weird feeling, and I sat on it for six months and I did nothing about it, and six months later, it's even weirder. Like, you want to be proactive and attack problems as they come, but you also don't want to overreact and think everything's a problem when it might not be.

[Alex Gage]

I wonder if some of that apprehension around the full service work is about the nerves you were talking about. It's like, if you just have a designer friend sort of helping you out, you have a lot more freedom to pump the brakes if you get too freaked out. Like, there's an exit clause, there's an exit ramp, or there's, like, a deceleration that you can control.

[Michelle Gage]

I think control's a lot of it. We've gotten feedback, not just this year, but past years, that it's like, I want to be the one in control as the client. They're like, I want to be the one in control. And. And that's just not how beautiful projects get done. Like, I didn't go to law school. I don't pretend to know how to be a lawyer. I don't pretend to know how to be a doctor. I don't pretend to know how to do surgery. And there are, you know, I never want to take away from anyone in the field who does do things a little bit differently. Like, there's a lot of merit to designers who do it a little differently and, you know, can have a thriving business based off of letting the. The client take the driver's seat and kind of steer the. The car in the way that the client wants to go. Like that. If that's your personality and that works for you, I think that that's fantastic. Like, you know, there's. There's a lot to be said about not being the one making all of the decisions, but we have just seen that the best end results come from us leading the charge. And I think the thing we keep trying to remind clients, prospective clients of is if you like our portfolio, then trust us. Like, you have to kind of take a backseat. And that's not in everyone's personality, and that's not in everyone's nature, and that's not why everyone wants to write a big check to hire someone. And I respect that. Like, there are people who, you know, I'm sure are thinking, I'm paying a lot of money. I want to have more of a say. We structure our business and our process in a way that absolutely gives clients a say and absolutely collects feedback from them on what they'd like, what they don't like, what their home needs. But it's done at the onset of the project. And it's almost this, like, exploratory experience where we are really mining these details out of them. But you kind of gotta let us study you. And I think for some clients, they want it to be more of something that, like, unfolds over weeks and months of work. And we have a process that works and that is allowing us to make everything completely custom to the client, but also giving them kind of this stopping point of, now you gotta let us take it over. Like, you can't keep sending us inspiration images. You can't keep, you know, having a say in every single aspect. Let us guide you in the right decision. We don't do anything without their approval. But they have to kind of be comfortable letting us be the expert. Some people are really fantastic at that. They make for the best clients. And some people have a really hard time letting go. And the process is always a little bit strained in that situation. So we try to look out for those red flags early on.

[Alex Gage]

Are there moments as the process unfolds where you give clients a sense of agency again, like, are you showing them options and they're picking one? Or, like, are there places where they get to sort of reassert themselves?

[Michelle Gage]

So we have a couple of meetings before the DP that are really meant to get the client's feedback along the way. So it's really about pulling that information out of them about what they like and they don't like. And it really starts at our kickoff, which is our first. First in office meeting. And we're showing them samples, and we're showing them, like, this is where we're headed for the design of this room. Speak now if you hate something. Like, we're, we're. We're early days.

[Alex Gage]

Like, is it like, like sketches? Is it product? Is it inspiration?

[Michelle Gage]

No, I can't draw for. It's some product and it's samples and it's some inspiration. Yeah, product samples and inspiration, and it's samples on the table. And it's, you know, hey, this is the first meeting. Like, we are not done with the design, but we love this rug and wallpaper combination. Do you like it? Should we proceed? It's almost like we're getting their permission along the way to proceed with the design. And that's where they have their way in. And they feel like they are a part of the process, because they absolutely are. And I tell them all the time, you know, I mention it in the consult in our first meeting. I'm going to show you things. If you don't like them, you will not hurt my feelings. And that's kind of how we get their permission along the way so that we're limiting revisions. I hate revisions. Revisions never go well. It never gets revised to a better end product. So that is. Is how we try to temper it. And we do want clients to be involved in the process. We get some of our best ideas from some of the things that clients say or clients request. Like, you know, we have a client who asked for a jib door the other month, and I love to do a jib door. Like, are you kidding me? I would love to do a jib door. It wasn't my idea. It was their idea, but it worked. So we're happy to incorporate it now. I think their project has like five jib doors and careful what you ask for because if it's a good request, like you're getting it in spades. But we structure it in a way that the feedback comes to us early on so that we're not constantly revising things and then it. Because that just creates confusion for clients. I think if it's constantly a like, you know, a never ending game of hunting for, you know, the perfect thing. So we, we try to cut it off at a certain point.

[Alex Gage]

You said that that sort of like tendency towards control or tendency towards like not letting go, I guess in some ways is a red flag for you. What are the other things you're looking out for now?

[Michelle Gage]

I mean, I think the biggest one is just that the budget doesn't or the anticipated budget doesn't match to the scope of work that they're looking to do. That's the biggest one. We always tell clients, you know, the process goes better the more decisive you are. But I don't think a lot of people know how decisive they're going to be when they get into it in terms of red flags. I mean, there are some things you can look for and there are some things you can spot and then there are some things you can only spot in hindsight. And I think I used to feel like I had a really good radar and I could like read people like a book. But I have been surprised more times than not. You know, we were working on a long distance project right now for a fantastic client who called us to do a kitchen. And I was like, you know, I'm not going to do a long distance kitchen. Like it was in Covid times too. I was like that, you know, it's not going to work. And they came back and said, well, what do you need the project to be in order to work with us? And I said, it needs to be the whole house. And I was like, they're never going to hire us. They came to us for a kitchen and we're like, it must be the whole house. And they did. And they're the most fantastic clients. Like we absolutely love working with them. And my radar was so off. We had it happen recently, you know, a couple years after that experience recently too, where a client came to us for a bathroom. And I was like, you know, we can definitely do a bathroom, but bathrooms alone aren't my favorite though. This is turning into my favorite bathroom ever. But. But I was like, you know, it's the most efficient thing when we can can bulk some work together so contractors aren't constantly traipsing through your house, you know, the design feels a little bit more cohesive. If you're open to doing a larger scope, that is what we would suggest for the best end result. And they were like, sure. And added a ton of rooms and then added phase two. And we've already chatted about a phase three. Like with clients, if they haven't done the process before, they don't necessarily know what they're asking for and what that costs. So a lot of what we do is educating them. And you can educate them early on. And a lot of times the feedback if you do, they might self eliminate and say like, not for me. And that's fine, you know, no harm, no foul. They don't necessarily know that when they ask for, you know, a custom kitchen or whatnot that they, you know, have admired on Instagram. What it costs. Sometimes when they find out, they're like, oh, sorry, bye. And sometimes they're like, okay, that's what it costs. Now I have new information and I'm going to make the decision that I want.

[Alex Gage]

Your business has evolved a lot since you started. When you look at where you are today, how do you think about what you want for the firm's next phase of evolution or growth?

[Michelle Gage]

We actually just had a meeting on this because we're about one and a half years away from our tenure. And it kind of dawned on me recently. I was like, where do I want this business to be in 10 years and is it there? And in a lot of ways it's better than I could have thought. And in a lot of ways, I haven't met the goals that I set out. When I left my corporate job, you know, I wanted to be on the COVID of Domino and that still hasn't happened and they're out of print. So I don't know if that's ever, ever gonna work out for me. But like, that was a huge goal. So I've had to rethink my goals along the way. But we are kind of intensely looking at, you know, the 10 year mark. And I think the biggest thing we want to achieve and have made strides in achieving, but haven't found fully achieved is being able to turn down the projects that don't feel aligned with what we do. We still have to take some projects that maybe aren't the gold standard of what we want to be working on. So I'd love to be in the position where like the inquiries are just at a steady state and we are just grabbing all the good ones. I'd love to think at 10 years my whole team is still in place and they're doing even better, bigger and better things with us. I really want, you know, I really want the, our book of work, our portfolio to really speak to our capabilities because I think our team is capable of so much more than we're even doing right now. I'd really like to see us be able to do more work that highlights everyone's individual abilities.

[Alex Gage]

With that in mind, what does success look like for you today?

[Michelle Gage]

Well, I think when you interviewed me for the 50 States project, I talked about having a really great personal life and that being the measure of success. And it still is. But I think that was very indicative of the time I was in where I was striving for a really great personal life. I mean, no one had a personal life that was, yeah, 22, right. We were in the thick of COVID projects, something like that. We were all probably dreaming about a personal life. So that's still true. I still want that for myself and my team. But I think working on creatively fulfilling projects is the, the next chapter, the evolution of that idea. I have gotten to the place where I'm quite pleased with my personal life. So now I'm looking back at my work life and saying, where do I want to be? Where do, where does my team want to be? There's projects that, that they're interested in attaining and working on. And I think having some really juicy creative projects that allow us all to combine our different but fantastic skills would be the goal. Like if we just came in so inspired every day, that would be the next thing for me. And also the COVID of Domino. If they could come back and give me that, that would be fantastic.

[Caitlin Peterson]

That's our show for today. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to keep up with the latest design industry news, check out new products or browse job openings, head on over to businessofhome.com and if you're enjoying Trade Tales, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts to help others discover the show. If you have a note for the show or a story of your own to share, I'd love to hear from you and you can email me at Trade Trade Tales at businessofhome.

[Michelle Gage]

Com.

[Caitlin Peterson]

Trade Tales is produced by me, Caitlin Peterson and Caroline Burke. This episode was edited by Caroline Burke and Michael Castaneda. Our theme music is by Kyle Scott Wilson. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you back here next week.