After a series of odd jobs, Anne McDonald spent a decade working as a designer at her father’s building company. While there, she was lucky enough to benefit from the structure of a business that was already up and running. She launched her own residential design studio in 2018, and quickly realized that when it came to her firm’s processes, she would be starting from square one—and that the responsibility for assembling those back-end mechanics sat squarely on her shoulders.
“Coming up with that infrastructure was really hard for me and not intuitive, and felt really clunky,” McDonald tells host Kaitlin Petersen on the latest episode of Trade Tales. “I just wanted someone else to take the reins, but when it’s your company, no one’s going to step in and save the day. I really had to figure that part out.”
Those initial efforts became even more essential when a flood of new projects came in at the height of the pandemic. Once her business was on solid footing, she began to think bigger about what it would mean to take her firm to the next level—toward larger projects, more robust budgets and new opportunities. That line of thinking ultimately led to a series of investments in her firm’s future: tapping a PR firm to increase exposure, hiring a top-shelf photography team to capture her work and bringing on an executive-level consultant to oversee the firm’s finances. Achieving the goals she laid out from the beginning has bolstered McDonald’s confidence in her business—and better yet, in her abilities as a leader.
“Every time I decide to do something—like hiring PR—sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t,” she says. “But when they do work, when you have made that little investment in yourself and you see the return on your investment? No one can replicate that feeling.”
Elsewhere in the episode, McDonald shares how she is navigating an intentional shift toward smaller projects, how her team is adjusting to a new pace of work, and why bringing on a CFO has helped her look toward the future.
Crucial insight: At first, McDonald struggled to justify to clients the costs of high-end furnishings—and her design work in general. Consulting a CFO has not only buttoned up her contracts and payment policies, but also helps her stand behind what she charges. “At the end of the day, I’m selling stuff. I’m selling my design [vision], I’m selling a feeling, [and] I’m literally selling a sofa with a particular fabric,” she says. “I have to be convinced of the value or the worth of all of those things—of my worth, of my team’s, of what we give the client—from a systems and an aesthetic perspective. But I also have to be really on board for the worth of a sofa or draperies that I’m selling. If I’m not, if there’s hesitancy at all, the client’s going to see and sense it.”
Key quote: “This business is [by nature] a vulnerable place to be. We are up in people’s business all the time. If they’re holding us at arm’s length, and they don’t want us to go there, it’s going to be a challenge. Everything’s going to be like pulling teeth, and no one’s going to be happy.”
This episode was sponsored by Loloi. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
