This week, we talk to Canadian entrepreneur, Crystal Collinson, about how she got started with interior design. She gives great advice on what you should consider as you’re thinking about starting an interior design business. Take a listen!
Welcome to Business Talk Sister Gawk! I’m Bekkah! And I’m Ruthie and today’s episode is titled “How to Become an Interior Designer” This week we have someone with us. Crystal Collinson and she is going to tell us all about herself! Thanks so much for being here with us today!
Crystal: Thank you, girls, for having me I’m excited to be here and this is I’m gonna have to be honest this is my first time having two people interviewing me so I’m gonna be it’s gonna be a little bit different so hopefully you guys obviously know what you’re doing and have it rehearsed so you don’t speak over each other but I’m going to try to just follow your lead but thank you so much for having me yeah I’ll try not to go rapid-fire and overwhelm you okay.
As an Interior Designer, What Do You Do?
Bekkah: The first question we have for you is what do you do what do I do?
Crystal: I’ve sort of found myself now – I’m a Canadian so I found myself in a “niche” as we like to say. I didn’t know you guys say in the US a “niche”. I cannot call myself legally an “interior designer” in Canada or Ontario because we have a governing body that I would have to write an exam for that I haven’t written so I will get my hand slapped if I call myself an interior designer. I basically refer to myself as an “interior design consultant”. I work predominantly with builders and developers of new homes and subdivisions. I will do their model homes. That would be the show home some people refer to them as show homes or model homes. I will design and decorate and furnish them right from plans so we’re basically planning everything from just the plans as the house is being built, we already have the furniture picked out and artwork and then we write down to all the little knickknacks and accessories. That’s sort of one side of the builder-developer sort of window or genre that I work with.
Then we also do sales presentation centers and so those would be like the retail stores that people would go in and buy their “to-be-built” home. They’ll look at the site plans and they’ll see where the different lots available and what type of houses can be built there. That’s becoming a lot more technical with all the different types of electronics. They have a lot of TVs and screens that you can pull up here “okay, well, this lot here I can put this house on,” and with virtual reality things are getting a lot more sophisticated. We incorporate a lot of that into the design. We would be doing everything from picking finishes, all the electrical, all the millwork which would be anything custom. Whether there’s cabinetry or what you call a “site plan table”. We’ve designed all of that and then as well, as doing showroom design for tile showrooms or builders that will have their decor studio where purchasers will go in and purchase or would pick all their finishes for the house. We’re designing all that. We would do again all the drawings. It’s basically like the drafting and the plans to design those spaces as well.
Why Did You Become a Business Owner in Interior Design?
Ruthie: Wow! Okay, so this is very versatile and you’ve got all kinds of things across the board that you’re working on but what is your why behind what you do? Why did you start with your design consulting?
Crystal: I think it was funny. When I was younger I used to so – this can be sort of a funny story I used to rearrange my furniture in my bedroom all the time and I used to look at the Sears catalog. I’d look into the bedroom section and I’d be looking at the duvet covers and not even sort of realizing that what I was doing and why I was doing it. That was just what I liked to do. I’d be like, “Well, I could move my bed over there!” My parents would be downstairs and hearing me as I’m moving my furniture by myself, pushing it along the floor. So I kind of always had that, but I didn’t ever really think of it as being a real career. All through high school I played sports and I did very well, at sports and I was academically good and I had a good average.
I got into university and I went in for kinesiology which is sort of studying of the body and I thought maybe eventually I’d be a gym teacher or physiotherapist or something. I got into that and within a semester I was like, “This isn’t for me.” I liked physical fitness and sports and all that for my own self but I didn’t really want to get into it. I guess once I started diving really, really deep into it I realized I didn’t really like it. I started researching more about interior design and decorating and what does it really involve. I think I took a year and a half off and I took some art courses and I mean it was never – I’m not a great artist I’m not a great drawer. I can’t draw great but I can visualize and I can see. I ended up getting into a college program and kind of went from there. It was kind of I guess suppressed for several years and not really realizing that this was a real viable career.
How Did You Know You Wanted to be an Interior Design Entrepreneur?
Bekkah: Wow! Okay, how did you start practicing to get better at it as you were like, “well,, I’m not really great at this, but I know that this is where I want to go.”
Crystal: I think what I realized quickly once I was in school. It was a pretty intensive program. It was a three-year program. A lot of them now are four years where you’re getting a degree whereas I did a three-year and just had a diploma because it really wasn’t offered much when I went to school. I think I just basically realized that my skills in drawing per se like sketching weren’t great, but there were so many other ways of figuring out how to communicate what it is I’m wanting to design and present to clients. I think it was just sort of finding, “Okay, I’m not great at that, and either I will outsource it, right? I’ll find somebody.” Actually in my third year of school is when I met my husband the year before, and he was in advertising and design.
I would say he’s a really good drawer. His sketching and 3D skills just for sketching perspective were amazing. He basically did all my artwork for me on my thesis project and I said, “Hey, in the real world you would be hiring somebody to do this. I’m now getting somebody else to do this.” I did a big chunk of it but he just sort of finessed it and made it look much better for my thesis project. I’m like, that’s reality, right? That’s a skillset I don’t have let’s just figure out a way of getting it. I always say interior design and what we do is we need to communicate our ideas the most effectively to clients, to the trades, to whoever is actually trying to execute what it is that our concept is or our design. I guess becoming creative in ways of saying “Okay, I can’t sketch it but there’s so much, especially nowadays!” There are so many 3D programs out there that you don’t even need to know how to draw anymore.
What Kind of Person Excels at Being an Interior Designer?
Ruthie: You had kind of mentioned how you have different skill sets than your husband does and different skill sets than other people around you maybe even, but obviously have this raw talent of being able to see a space and create something really cool. What kind of person really excels at being an interior designer?
Crystal: Well, it’s funny. I think so many people have a bit of a misconception that it’s a just great “Oh! It must be so much fun doing what you do and you just get to be creative all the time!” In reality, if you are somebody that is going to be working for by yourself or as a junior you’re probably going to work for somebody else. You’re going to learn a lot of it but it’s 20% creativity in 80% project management in administration. I always say if you’ve got all the greatest ideas in the world but if you can’t stick to a budget to make sure that your ideas and your concepts fit within a budget fit, within a proper timeline, if you can’t execute these in a responsible method in the sense you’re like it’s no good, right? Anybody can design stuff. I don’t mean anybody but designing with no budget and the sky’s the limit that’s easy, right? The challenge is “Okay, where do we put the money towards? Where do we not? Where do we -” It’s a ton of administration project management in the sense of there are so many things that you have to be super, super organized. I think a lot of people don’t sort of see that. They think, “Oh! It’s just fun. You get to pick things and spend other people’s money!” When it’s really not the truth.
How Did You Start Doing Sales as an Interior Designer, and How Has That Changed?
Bekkah: That kind of transitions us into that area of how do you do it? How did you do sales when you first started and how did that kind of change over time?
Crystal: Sales are not – I mean most of us go into the business not because we want to sell, right? I mean in any type of creative field.
Bekkah: Right?
Crystal: It’s more we went into business because we like what we’re doing but unfortunately without the sales part you’re not gonna have a business. So I think really if you don’t have the natural ability to sell you need to learn. Whether it’s taking workshops, whether it’s reading books, I think a lot of it is just having confidence in your ideas. Again that comes with time and experience right. When I first started out on my own and getting my first client. When I was out on my own because I worked for a couple different design firms before I went on my own and it’s scary! You’re feeling like you’ve got a lot of responsibility which you do and you just need to – I think the other thing is just if you don’t know, don’t pretend that you know. You’re better to be I think honest and say, “I’m gonna need to look into that or I’m going to need to research that.” And as designers, I always say that we know a little bit about a whole bunch of things.
We need to go to the specialist. We need to go to a flooring specialist who knows everything that there is to know about let’s say hardwood. You go to a tile specialist because you need to have a certain application or something that’s a bit unique. You need to go to them that specializes. As long as you know where your limitations are and where to bring in somebody that’s more knowledgeable because you can’t know everything in our field. You cannot know everything. There are just so many. I mean there’s electrical, there’s lighting, there are the different types of surfaces, there’s just so much to know but it’s just being authentic and saying, “Listen, I don’t have the answer to that.” That I think is being true and I think initially when I started I felt like I should have known everything but it’s just not possible.
Ruthie: In that same vein, is something that you learned that you would really wish that you would have learned when you were younger or something that you would tell your younger self now.
Crystal: I think probably the biggest thing would be just not “the boundaries” but more – I think as designers we tend to be using a sort of a sweeping statement but we tend to be “people pleasers”. We’re doing jobs because we want to make somebody happy. We want to great design this great space for them so we want to make them happy. We have a tendency to be a bit of a people pleaser. I think the biggest thing is trying to sometimes not be completely honest with your clients in the sense of they want to – let’s just use a bathroom or something. “Okay, we want to renovate our master bathroom and we have about $15,000 – $20,000 to spend.”
If you’re new in the industry or if you don’t have the confidence to say, “That’s not possible,” to be honest with your clients upfront and direct and be transparent. It’s not even transparent, it’s just being like, “Listen, that’s not doable.” You’re wasting everybody’s time so either you say, “Listen, for that $20,000, we can do this, this, this, and this but if you want to do everything that you’re asking for it’s going to be more like $50,000.” I think conversations about money were hard I think when I was younger and now I’ve just realized that there’s no sugar-coating it because it’s gonna come out at some point so you might as well be upfront from the beginning. If it’s not doable then nobody’s upset and you’ve managed expectations.
Is Networking Impactful to Getting Started as an Interior Designer?
Bekkah: How impactful was networking for you when you first got started or is it impactful now?
Crystal: Oh it’s always, always going to be. It’s funny when I first started I think for me the networking was more with other designers and just learning. There’s stuff you learn at school but once you’re out on your own running your own business, it’s learning about different resources and suppliers, “Oh, don’t deal with them because I’ve had a lot of problems with them!” or “Jeez! I need this soapstone. Does anybody know a good place?” Soapstone’s not super common. You’d be like, “Does anybody know a good fabricator?” just that sharing of information. There was that sort of form of networking that was initially a part of starting a business, networking and just learning about trades and suppliers. That’s continuing. Now with the internet, because I’ve been in this business 20 years there’s just so much more. There’s so much more information out there. There are so many more groups and forums and people are so open! Which is amazing! It’s wonderful and I think it’s so great that everyone’s become more collaborative as opposed to competitive. There was still everybody held their cards quite close to their chest and didn’t want to share a ton of information, but I was lucky to find a few designers that we helped each other out because that’s what we did. It was like, “Oh! That’s great! Okay, well, here’s a great contact! Give Brian a call or give him a call, he’s really good for whatever.” Then networking as far as clients go I think you just have to start getting the word out about what it is that you do. I think a lot of people have a tendency to be a little bit, I don’t want to say “shy” about it but not necessarily – I don’t know what the word is. It’s like have your elevator pitch so to speak but be confident! “This is what I do and this is who I do it for.” I mean there are so many different niches or niches in interior design that it’s not just residential. There are all different types of commercial! There are restaurants, there’s hospitality, you can take interior design and then get into the sales avenue where you’re representing companies like flooring companies or fabric companies or that kind of thing. I always say you just never know where your next job is going to come from. You just never know.
What Group of People Should Interior Designers Surround Themselves With?
Ruthie: In moving forward with your business and everything what sort of partners were really best to work with for you to make sure that a project goes well?
Crystal: What do you mean my partners? Like clients?
Ruthie: Like people that you collaborate with like, what would be your set of people that you work with to get a project done?
Crystal: I think what I found is I like to work with people that want to do a good job and I know that sounds pretty obvious but I’ve seen a lot of situations where designers have gone in and have spoken to the trades, electricians, the plumbers, the tile people just horribly and have just sort of treated them like the labor and the servants so to speak. That’s a bit of an extreme but I think you’re all trying to get to the finish line together and you are one piece of this big puzzle. Nothing gets built by one person. You don’t design by yourself in its entirety. You have so many different trades that are going to be in there. There are times like many times where I’ve been like, “Oh, shoot I forgot to put that we needed wiring for here or something.” If you have a good relationship with your trades or the supers on site they’re going to help you. I want people that understand that I’m not coming in there to cause problems. I mean my tagline is “design should solve problems and not cause them.” That’s exactly it. We’re all trying to get this project finished. We’re all trying to do a good job and so we have to collaborate. We have to work together it’s a team. It takes a village so to speak but it does! It takes a lot of people to get the project executed and finished to what the original vision was.
Ruthie: How do you budget for projects and how do you know what to charge based on organizing all of the supplies and all of that for what you think it’s going to be in the end for them to get their project done?
Crystal: Well, I work, as I said, predominantly with builders I have to go in with a flat fee. A lot of designers residential will charge hourly and that’s a never-ending discussion that we have as designers and decorators. There is the fee system because there are just so many different ways people charge. There’s per square foot, there’s hourly, there’s percentages, there’s this, there’s that, so there’s different things. Typically, what I will do because when you go into design a project you’re going in and saying “Okay, here’s what my design fees are going to be to design this project. I don’t know exactly what’s going to go into this project yet because we haven’t designed it.”
We always like to say that the furnishings budget is gonna need to be developed once the design is developed because you would completely shoot yourself in the foot with the exception of model homes. Now I’ve done so many of them over the years that I can say “Okay, three bedroom, four bedroom, there’s not a lot of variables. We know what you’re going to need in each of these rooms and so I can get that. I can give an actual furnishings price for but if I’m doing a sales center or if you’re doing a decor center or a design studio we have no idea. There’s all this custom mail work that has to be drawn. We have to get it priced. It’s really about “you’re hiring me as a designer so this is my design fee to do this” and then we will develop the furnishings budget.
Does Interior Design Cross Over With Home Staging?
Bekkah: Is there any crossover of interior design with home staging opportunities? I know you kind of said a little bit about the knickknacks thing or whatever is that really common or not really?
Crystal: I’ve done one house where I staged it and it was because it was for a builder that was building like a one-off custom home. They just bought a bungalow or something and then tore off the roof and rebuilt it and they said, “Would you do it?” and I said, “Yeah,” because I had a relationship with them but it’s a different beast. Staging you tend to rent the furniture and maybe from the knickknacks and all the accessories, this stager may have an inventory and then she’ll just reuse them at different houses, but you’re going to typically rent the sofas, you’re going to rent all the furniture. Whereas when we do model homes, we purchase everything, and the builder purchases that in its entirety and they own it all. We’re done. Staging It’s like you run all this stuff and you’ve got to get the stuff there and then you got to rent it for a month or two or however long it takes them to sell the house. I mean I know that there are some decorators that sort of do a bit of a crossover but it does operate quite differently.
How to Present to Customers as an Interior Designer
Ruthie: Okay, then how do you present all of that to customers? Because it sounds like so much collaboration and how do you kind of make it all into one cohesive package to be able to?
Crystal: There used to be, in the olden days, there used to be what they call “sample boards” or “mood boards”, right? You put your pictures, this is where your sketching skills would come in handy. Whereas nowadays, basically, I do almost a Powerpoint or Google Slides. Typically, what I’ll do at the beginning of a project, once I kind of understand the scope of work and what the project is about and who they’re targeting – for my builder clients I put together what I call a “look and feel” because they may say to me, “Well, we want kind of a homey, warm place.” What does that mean? I kind of figure where is the location? What is your demographic? Who are typically your buyers? It could be first-time buyers, it could be empty nesters, it could be sort of middle, where they’re move up buyers that kind of thing. Then I’ll put together what I call a “look and feel”. We’ll grab images of kitchens that we think are kind of the style we’re looking at. We’ll just put together those which is like a mood board in essence.
We kind of make sure we present that to the client so we make sure that we’re speaking the same language. A picture speaks a thousand words so we show them “this is what we’re thinking. Is this what you guys are thinking? Does this feel right to you? Is this sort of what you guys are going for? The intangible, does this feel like we’re hitting the mark?” And 90% of the time it’s “yeah, that’s the direction we want to go” or “we want to tweak it a little bit, a little less whatever, a little less country, a little bit more etc.” We always ask, “Is it pottery barn? Is it restoration hardware?” You have these terminologies and it’s not that we’re buying the stuff from there it’s just there’s a look to it, right? We do that through, as I said, images like Pinterest. Grab a couple light fixtures it’ll speak what the whole design direction is going to look like and then we know that this is our “look and feel”. Then we go off and start picking finishes and then we present those to the clients. It’s usually, depending again on the client, some of my clients have been amazing to be like “yep, no, we’re good. I don’t need to see all the furniture. That’s fine” and then others want to see every single thing. So it just depends but it’s like I say it’s kind of like a layering. You start off pretty wide and then you get down to the nitty-gritty of the details.
How Did You Find Your Target Demographic in Interior Design?
Ruthie: You kind of mention that a little bit when you’re trying to figure out your target demographic, but how did you find out your target demographic when you first started?
Crystal: I think I kind of fell into it to be honest. When I went out on my own, I’d worked for one of our big department stores here designing store interiors before. I also did exhibit design for trade shows and I said I can’t I think I really want to do more of the residential because I felt like the commercial side that I was doing with the retail was all kind of hard. There wasn’t a lot of pretty stuff. There wasn’t a lot of interesting visuals. It was all about making sure that the product can be displayed. I basically just started. I went on my own and then I joined what was the Home Builders Association and I got called from quite a large builder and said, “We’ve got a couple model homes, would you like to bid on them?” So I went in like it was the fake it till you make it thing. I really didn’t know what I was doing. I mean it was like, “Okay, we gotta furnish the house, I get that.” But there were some nuances of the business and the industry. Then, thankfully, one of the sales managers there she and I are still good friends to this day, she kind of helped guide me a little bit on what I needed to do and then it just sort of rolled from there.
What Resources or Tools Would Be Beneficial to Someone Interested in Interior Design?
Bekkah: Wow! What resources or tools would you think be beneficial to somebody else who wants to get started in consulting like this?
Crystal: Well, I think you need to really understand what the industry really is about. When I was saying the misconception of it’s just picking pretty things and it’s not, especially if you’re running your own business. It’s really not. That’s such a small portion of what you do on the day-to-day as you know, Bekkah, running your own businesses. You’re wearing 25 different hats and there’s just always so much stuff to be done. I think you just need to really understand what the business is about and I would recommend going to school. I think it’s going to give to you. It’s also going to make sure that you like what you’re doing because from our first year to our third year I think a third of the people left actually graduated from the first year. So many people dropped out. I think that it’s a good sign to see if you really, really enjoy it. Then I think you need to network. Not networking in the business sense of it. It’s just talking to people and interviewing obviously.
If you’re thinking of getting into the industry interview other designers and find out what it’s really like and what area that you think you might be interested in. Some people love design but only want to do commercial, do offices and that type of thing. Residential is a completely different beast from commercial. There are lots of different avenues in it and as I mentioned before maybe you want to be an architectural rep that just knows everything there is to know about a certain quartz countertops. Maybe you want to get into that or there are lots of different avenues. I think it’s doing some research and seeing what sort of lights a fire in you, what seems interesting, and if there’s any opportunity to do some job shadowing. Obviously, not right now in COVID, but you know some sort of that type of interning just to really understand and make sure what is happening and what really happens is what you want to do. Just be open to it because there’s a lot to. There’s a lot to learn and ask questions!
Bekkah: Yeah and I’m going to just say too for some of you guys who are listening we have not put in this plug yet but if you’re listening or wanting to listen to some interviews with designers you should definitely check out Crystal’s podcast the Productive Designer because she does just that. She interviews a lot of different people and that could definitely be valuable to you!
Crystal: That’s for sure! I mean it’s great! I get to talk to a lot of interesting people and everybody’s got a different story how they ended up where they’re at. I do believe that sometimes your career path is not a straight one for sure. So if you’re young and in your 20s, like I always say I feel for this generation, because there are just so many things that you can do so many options!
Ruthie: Tell our listeners a little bit about how people can find you.
Crystal: I have, as you mentioned, thank you, the Productive Designer. Productivedesigner.com is the website and then it’s on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and Google. I think I’m on Google I can’t remember! On Amazon anyways! You can just go to the website on that and then my Instagram is at builderdesigner.ca Collinson Interiors is our website! I would love to if anybody’s got any questions probably the best one to reach out to me would be on the Productive Designer just for that aspect of understanding the business. That’s what I’m trying to do is just sort of give tools and tips and understand the reality of what it is to run a business as a small business owner or solopreneur. That type of thing and just understand the true workings of what it’s like to be an independent design professional.
Ruthie: Yeah well, I know that I have learned a lot from you in just the 20 minutes or so that we’ve been talking so I know that our listeners will also get a lot from you!
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