A Well-Designed Business® | Interior Design Business Podcast

Welcome to A Well-Designed Business! Are you in for a treat today! LuAnn welcomes Stephanie Castillo, the principal of Rumble Interiors, back to the show. Stephanie was a guest on Episode #391, as well, and is joined by Renee Fyall of D. Marie Interiors and Sam Mikel of Nest Design Studio. These ladies are all interior designers, doing business in the city of Ellensburg, Washington. Ellensburg is...

Welcome to A Well-Designed Business! It’s Power Talk Friday! LuAnn’s guest today is Katie Krimitsos, Creator of the Women’s Meditation Network. The last time that Katie was featured on A Well-Designed Business on episode 253, she was the fearless leader of the Biz Women Rock community. Listen in to catch up with all that’s been going on with Katie since her newest endeavor. She truly has a passion...

Welcome to A Well-Designed Business! Did you miss the amazing “19 Hours” free virtual business summit that ran the week of April 6th through April 9th, 2020? If so, LuAnn will be filling you in on the industry’s answer to the COVID-19 crisis that contains all of the incredible presentations and panel discussions that was originally planned for High Point Market Spring 2020. Today’s show is a repla...

Welcome to A Well-Designed Business! On today’s show, LuAnn is joined by industry-icon, Kendall Wilkinson. They’ll be chatting about Kendall’s perspective on her experience in growing an esteemed and successful firm. They discuss budgets to clients to discovery-call practices to Kendall’s experience in the 2008 recession where she had to use guerilla-style marketing strategies to build a pipeline....

Welcome to a Well-Designed Business, it’s Power Talk Friday! Nancy Lane, CEO of Nancy Lane Interiors in Houston, Texas, joins LuAnn today and you’ll be learning all about the Process Leads to Profits course that Nancy took last winter and the tangible benefits she has received from it. You’ll also hear how Nancy utilized Mydoma Studio to define her services for her prospective clients and how she...

Welcome to A Well-Designed Business, it’s time for an episode of “What Would Lu Do?” where you ask the questions and LuAnn helps out with the answers. Today’s question comes from listener Jane, who would like to know how to handle a client who is refusing to pay a bill. Listen in as LuAnn digs into the details, susses out the situation, and lays out her reasoning on the resolution. If you have a b...

Welcome to A Well-Designed Business! LuAnn gets to chat with Krista Watterworth Alterman, CEO of Krista Home in Palm Beach, Florida, about company mission and vision, how important it is to lift others up, and very timely advice on how to face fear. Krista leads her company with purpose and clarity. She is the kind of CEO that has taken the time to figure these things out for herself and as you li...

Welcome to a Well-Designed Business, it’s Power Talk Friday! And today LuAnn will be doing a ‘Where Are They Now’ episode with Wendy Woloshchuk, who last made her appearance on A Well-Designed Business about two years ago.    What a difference those two years have made! Wendy is here to share the invaluable information she has learned from LuAnn Live and The Power Talk Friday Tour, the implementat...

Welcome to a Well-Designed Business! LuAnn is so excited to finally be able to introduce this new sponsor to the show by chatting with none other than the CEO of Jaipur Living, Asha Chaudhary! In this episode, you’ll be learning about Jaipur’s beauty, value, and social responsibility, as well as their customer-centric trade partner program and their easier-than-ever to browse website with stunning...

Welcome to a Well-Designed Business! Today is a special episode because it features a #smartlady that LuAnn has come to know over the last several months and has been impressed by how thoughtfully and purposefully she runs her interior design firm. Traci Connell joins LuAnn and weaves in info not only about how she designs, but how she delivers the design process to her clients. You’re going to le...

Welcome to A Well-Designed Business, it’s Power Talk Friday! Sara Lynn Brennan joins  LuAnn to chat about faith or fear. Earlier this year, Sara wrote a blogpost titled, “Are You Operating Your Design Business Out of Faith or Fear?” and in the midst of the current pandemic, it seems like a great time to re-visit her reflections. Although her original intent had nothing to do with the Corona Virus,...

Welcome to A Well-Designed Business! LuAnn brings you a very special conversation today, one that may hit very close to home for many of us; mental illness. Bearing that in mind, I must also say that this show was recorded months ago before the word COVID 19 was even legitimately on our radar. Even though the topic of mental illness can be sensitive, it’s important to talk about it.  Whether menta...

Welcome to A Well-Designed Business, it’s Power Talk Friday! Peter Lang joins LuAnn on today’s show to discuss accounting that is specific to design firms. Peter is a CPA that works exclusively with interior designers, and he will be covering the nuances of the industry. He is also a co-author of LuAnn’s latest book, A Well-Designed Business: The Power Talk Friday Experts. If you’re a business own...

Welcome to this episode of A Well-Designed Business! Gabriela Gargano joins LuAnn in this episode to caution us as entrepreneurs about being careful not to apply reasons and rationale to decisions that we are facing because we are reluctant to take the risk. Gaby also shares some very specific strategies that she is employing as the CEO of her design firm in light of the Corona Virus, which you wi...

Welcome to this episode of A Well-Designed Business, it’s Power Talk Friday! LuAnn chats with Sandra Funk about Sandra’s amazing new program for the interior design community. Her program is called “The Interior Design Standard”. Just wait until you hear about it, you’re going to LOVE this! Sandra Funk is the CEO and Principal Designer of House of Funk, a greater New York area design firm working...

Welcome to A Well-Designed Business! LuAnn has been considering adding a Wednesday show answering straight-up questions that you ask her via email and SM, and with everything happening in the world right now, she thought this was the perfect time to debut “What Would Lu Do?” On today’s episode, she will be discussing doing business through a crisis. In the 40 years, she’s been in business, she has...

Welcome to A Well Designed Business! It’s WTF, Window Treatment Friday! In today’s episode, LuAnn and her friend and co-host of WTF, Vita (Vitalia) Vygovska, cover effective communication between the interior designer and the workroom to ensure a successful project. One of the private Facebook groups that Vita belongs to is the “Soft Furnishings & Upholstery” group. Prior to this show, she posted...

Welcome to A Well-Designed Business! LuAnn’s guest today is Melissa Lindsay, Co-Owner of Pimlico Interiors, located in Westport, CT. She will be sharing some of the methods and tactics that she and her partner, Jill Kakaletris, use when dealing with difficult conversations and difficult clients. As #seasoned designers, Melissa and Jill have had their share of difficult conversations with clients a...

Welcome to A Well-Designed Business. It’s Power Talk Friday! On today’s show, Jude Charles joins LuAnn for a chat about videos, and how important they are to our websites. He is here to explain that compelling video is achieved through storytelling, and how we can’t have video just for video’s sake. It must be compelling and it must do the heavy lifting of attracting our ideal client to us. Jude i...

Welcome to A Well-Designed Business! In this episode, LuAnn chats with Jaclyn Lankiewicz, the woman behind the Instagram handle, Jaclynmari_. She is the principle of Jaclyn Marie Interiors based in Long Island, NY. Her journey into interior design, like many, has not been a direct line. Basically, Jaclyn created an Instagram page that was getting so much attention that it prompted person after per...

Welcome to A Well-Designed Business! In this episode, LuAnn recounts the way that Sara Lynn Brennan, from Sara Lynn Brennan Interiors, went from being a stranger to her, to someone she treasures as a friend, all in less than two years. As an entrepreneur, Sara stands out as one of the most unusual LuAnn has met during her entire business career and her podcast journey. You may have noticed lots of...

Welcome to A Well-Designed Business! On this episode, LuAnn sits down for a chat with Denise Wenacur, the principle of DW Design & Décor in Croton on the Hudson, which is a beautiful community just outside of NYC. Design-build is the hot topic of the day, and you’ll learn the importance of having an interior designer as the point person for the client between the architect, the builder and themsel...

Welcome to A Well Designed Business! It’s WTF, Window Treatment Friday! It’s been a while since LuAnn has had a window treatment episode, so she’s super-excited to have her co-host of WTF, Vita (Vitalia) Vygovska back on the show. Hardware is the subject of today’s show, and if talking about ripple folds, pinch pleats, stationary rods, rod pockets, and rods with c-rings make your heart beat a litt...

Welcome to this episode of Power Talk Friday! Join LuAnn and her guest, Victoria Sanchez, in this thought-provoking conversation about changing things up in the way we educate interior designers. Her concern is if we don’t start to make changes in the design curriculum, then we, as an industry, are at risk. At one time, Victoria served as in interior design professor at Marymount University and th...

Welcome to this episode of Power Talk Friday! Today, LuAnn shares her findings on coaching a diverse group of entrepreneurs. As it turns out, they have several tangible things in common that she was so impressed by that she decided to dedicate a podcast to complimenting these special people and laying out for you what she has discovered in their time together. As she relates, this has been an ‘A-h...