Melissa Oholendt found her passion for interior design in her youth; buying shelter magazines with her allowance from picking strawberries in the backyard and painting her bedroom that perfect shade of navy blue. However, after beginning her interior design college education in 2001, that passion came to a standstill after a conversation with her college professor about the realities of the interior design industry. For the first time, Melissa started to doubt her purpose.
It took more than 15 years, a fast paced career in finance and a decade-long entrepreneurial career in photography, for Melissa to circle back to her true passion in 2019, when Oho Interiors began.
Hear Melissa’s story of rediscovering her passion, trusting the path, and how she’s built a sustainable business doing what she loves.
Melissa Oholendt found her passion for interior design in her youth; buying shelter magazines with her allowance from picking strawberries in the backyard and painting her bedroom that perfect shade of navy blue. However, after beginning her interior design college education in 2001, that passion came to a standstill after a conversation with her college professor about the realities of the interior design industry. For the first time, Melissa started to doubt her purpose.
It took more than 15 years, a fast paced career in finance and a decade-long entrepreneurial career in photography, for Melissa to circle back to her true passion in 2019, when Oho Interiors began.
Hear Melissa’s story of rediscovering her passion, trusting the path, and how she’s built a sustainable business doing what she loves.
Melissa (00:00):
I was four or five months into a really small fledgling business where I didn't really know what I was doing. To be really frank with you from a business perspective, I knew how to build a brand. I knew how to market myself, but in terms of the business of interior design, I didn't know what I was doing. But Covid hit. We all sat in our houses for two months and looked around and realized we didn't like what we saw, and by the time we kind of all came out of quarantine, I had a client list that was bigger than I could have anticipated, and I hit the ground running and I have not really looked up since.
Shanna (00:37):
You are listening to Consider the Wildflowers, the podcast episode 80, Melissa Oand found her passion for interior design in her youth buying shelter magazines with her allowance from picking strawberries in the backyard and painting her bedroom that perfect shade of navy blue. However, after beginning her interior design college education in 2001, that passion came to a standstill after a conversation with her college professor about the realities of the interior design industry. For the first time, Melissa started to doubt her purpose. It took more than 15 years, a fast-paced career in finance and a decade long entrepreneurial career in photography. For Melissa to circle back to her true passion in 2019 when Ojo Interiors began, hear Melissa's story of rediscovering her passion, trusting the path, and how she's built a sustainable business doing what she loves. If you dig professional bios, here goes Since its founding in 2019, Ojo Interiors has been nationally recognized for their English inspired, updated, traditional, yet utterly livable interiors and exist to craft fully custom homes that speak to tradition with eyes on the future, with the goal to truly contribute and enhance our clients' lives.
(01:42):
All in the name of great design. Okay, formal introductions over, let's dive in. Hey, it's Shanna, and this is Consider the Wildflowers, the podcast. For the past 15 plus years, I've had the honor to hear thousands of stories from entrepreneurs around the world. As a former Fortune 100 financial advisor turned business consultant, I have a unique opportunity to see the reel. Behind the highlight reel. I'm talking profit and loss statements, unpaid taxes, moments of burnout, and those of utter victory, or as my husband says, the content everyone is wondering but not many are talking about. And now I'm bringing these private conversations to you. Hear the untold stories of how industry leaders, founders, and up and coming entrepreneurs got their start, the experiences that shaped them and the journey to building the brands they have today. Stories that will inspire and reignite and encourage to redefine success and build a life and business on your own terms. Welcome Wildflower. I'm so glad you're here. Hi, Melissa. Welcome to the show.
Melissa (02:36):
Hi. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Shanna (02:40):
I'm so excited to have you, and thank you for being a listener. It sounds like you've listened to some of the podcasts or a few of them, and I'm so beyond excited to talk with you today just because of your background, and you probably don't know this about me, but I'm obsessed with interior design and I always, maybe you hear this a lot and you're like, whatever. But I've always said if I had another career other than what I do now, I mean finance, I would do interior design. So the fact that you have a background in finance and then I'm just so intrigued.
Melissa (03:17):
Yeah, been a windy road, so I'm excited to talk about it.
Shanna (03:22):
It's going to be fun. Okay, so will you just briefly, really quickly tell everybody who you are and what you do now and then I just want to go back and hear the journey?
Melissa (03:35):
Sure. So my name is Melissa Oland. I am the founder and principal designer at Ojo Interiors. That is my third career, so I'm sure we'll have a lot to talk about.
Shanna (03:47):
Okay, yes. Third career. Tell me about your background. What were your first two careers? How did you find your love of interior design and then start to pursue it? I mean, I want to hear the journey.
Melissa (04:03):
Sure. So I mean, I could go back pretty far, so maybe write me in if I go back too far, but
Shanna (04:10):
I did read your bio and the perfect Navy paint, so I'm excited about that. It's been in you for a long time. It
Melissa (04:17):
Has. I feel like it really stemmed from the fact that my parents designed and built my childhood home back in Utah and in another life you say would've been an interior designer. I think my dad, my engineer dad really would have been an architect. He loved drafting floor plans, still does, but that is really how I kind of found my way into thinking about homes differently. I truly spent hours as a child building floor plans in whatever software my father had at the time.
Shanna (04:52):
With your dad, just for fun?
Melissa (04:54):
No, just me. Just by myself being a little nerd behind a computer.
Shanna (05:00):
And how old were you when they built this house?
Melissa (05:04):
I was really young when they built that house. I think probably like eight or nine maybe. Okay. So that drafting part probably happened into my teenage years, early teens, something like that. But it really helped me think about homes in a much different way than I had. Seeing how a home could truly be molded to be what someone might need out of it, just out of thin air was so compelling to me. And so the first chance I had to take an interior design class in high school, I jumped at the chance of doing that. And looking back, I feel like it was really the time when I found who I was. Well, as much as you can as a teenager, but color theory, balance, proportions, get all of those things truly ignited a passion in me, and I felt really powerful to be really honest with you.
(05:56):
It was kind of the first time my life I felt this knowledge that felt really applicable to real life. So I went to college with the intent of getting my design degree, but about a year and a half in, I had a conversation with a really well-meaning professor of mine that really did end up changing the course of my life. And in hindsight, that was exactly what I needed. It put me on the path to gain the skillset that I needed, but it did take me off of the path of interior design. So the time that felt really devastating and really confusing, I felt like I had a really clear path for what I wanted in life, and that was sort of a big derailment for me. So I changed directions, ended up landing on a career path that took me into a communications PR role, and then somehow landed in a job for a distressed debt hedge fund in Minneapolis, which was wildly outside of where I had expected to land.
(06:57):
It was super fun, super fast paced as I'm sure you're familiar and incredibly type A, which fed a lot of my skillset to be really honest with you. I loved it, loved the people, loved everything about it, but it was so fast-paced and it was so type A that I found that I needed some sort of creative outlet to channel some of that creative muscle that I really was atrophying at that time. So then I ended up picking up a camera and truly just one day picked up a camera and started shooting it. And then I found myself a little bit later with sort of a full fledged roster of photography clients while trying to manage a more than full-time job in finance. Okay.
Shanna (07:44):
Wait, Melissa, I have to stop you. Yeah, I know. This is so good. First, would you be comfortable sharing and you can say no, maybe the professors, why did they not think interior design or what steered you away from that?
Melissa (08:03):
Yeah, that's a great question. I'm happy to share about that. I think what it stems from, and I couldn't have put words to it at the time, but this professor could really sense in me this desire to be an entrepreneur. And at that time, I mean it was 2001, the design industry was so different from what it is now. It was all luxury, it was all, everything that you see in Architectural Digest, it was very high-end niche, just very opposite of where it is now. It was much less attainable. And I think at that time, the traditional pathway in interior design was really to apprentice under a designer at their firm and then work your way up and then hopefully one day you could buy their book of clients from them once they were ready to either retire or leave for something else. And there really wasn't a lot of opportunity for someone to come in and say, I want to be an interior designer and I'm going to start my own firm, and this professor could really sense that that's exactly what I wanted to be and what I wanted to do, even though I couldn't have put words to it.
(09:15):
So that conversation point was really like, Hey, I think that this is what you're looking for and that's not really what the design field as it is can stand. Yes,
Shanna (09:27):
Which
Melissa (09:27):
Hurt. And so that
Shanna (09:28):
So hard. It hurt.
Melissa (09:30):
It did. It did for sure.
Shanna (09:33):
So then you're moving into finance, start doing photography. So on the side, was it portrait photography, wedding photography, did you want to make money doing it or just was it kind of really fueling the creativity in you?
Melissa (09:48):
It really at the beginning it really did fuel creativity for me. I think I've always struggled with seeing myself as a creative, as a traditional creative because I am so type A and because organization and entrepreneurial activities really do feed a lot of passion within me, so I've always viewed those very much in opposition to each other, but it started really as a passion project and it was for the most part portrait photography. And then I started dabbling in wedding photography, and then I found myself doing some sort of corporate branding kind of photography. And then by the end of my tenure in photography, I sort of had a real large wheelhouse from weddings to interior design clients
Shanna (10:40):
Kind
Melissa (10:40):
Of roster.
Shanna (10:42):
Okay. So you're working in finance this whole time doing photography. When did things start to shift? I mean, did you think about taking photography? Were you wanting to leave finance? Did you think, when did interior design come back? Just how did the transition all happen?
Melissa (11:01):
So it was in 2011, I made that leap from finance into full-time photography, and that was obviously, especially in finance, we're really taught to do things by the number That leap was really a leap of faith. I didn't have any, this was not what I would recommend in general, but I didn't have any sort of savings. Obviously I was married at the time or married to my current husband. This is sounding really, this is going off the rails a little bit, but married to my husband, which he had a very stable career. He had just graduated from law school and he was kind of finding his own way, but he was taking a pretty traditional route, and so I had the flexibility to say, I'm going to just make this leap of faith. I have no savings to speak of to sort of support this leaving a career in finance.
(11:58):
I'm just going to trust that the parachutes there when I jump. In hindsight, I don't know if that was age or just a loss of sanity for a time, but I did. I made that leap and it was wonderful. So that was in 2011, and then it really was truly, I kind of call it the best of times and the worst of times I knew that at the basis of it I wanted to have a business of my own, and I think photography was just the outlet of the moment that I was using to make that happen.
(12:36):
My photography work was decent, but I also knew I had more of a skillset on how to market myself, and therefore I was able to build a brand and really kind of catapulted my career with photography into a place that was really beyond what I could have ever imagined doing in photography. I was doing beautiful work for clients. It was ending up in places like Martha Stewart and Brides Magazine. My corporate clients included Target and other Fortune 500 companies. I was named one of the top 50 photographers in the world by Brides magazine, which was out of nowhere and shocking by all measures, I had really hit a level of success that had felt really unattainable just years prior, but as the life tends to circle back on you in 2016, I had a really awful year of personal tragedies that sort of put a lot of perspective on what I was doing and the business that I was building.
(13:34):
My beloved grandfather passed away really unexpectedly, and my mom was diagnosed with cancer, and we also found out we couldn't have kids biologically after kind of struggling with infertility for a couple years. So it was just sort of one after the other kind of hits to the world that we had built, and the timing of those always seemed to happen. Right before I had a wedding, I remember I was photographing a wedding in California and it was beautiful wedding and that night of the wedding I took a red eye from California to Florida for my grandfather's funeral, and there was another time where we found out on a Thursday we couldn't have biological children, and I had a wedding on a Saturday and I found myself in the bathroom during cocktail hour. Poor bride never knew it and never will know it, but I was just sobbing because I was just a mess.
(14:26):
Those things I think had to happen that way because I was building a business that was truly built around me and built around what I could do. And contractually, obviously I was obligated to show up at these weddings, so I knew that that wasn't going to be sustainable. I knew that as life sort of throws you more tragedies and all of the things that kind of happen as we get older, I knew that I would crumble under the pressure if that was sort of the pathway I needed to continue on. So in 2016, I was like, I have to figure out something else. And I sort of put an end date of the end of 2019 is being, that was my stop date of what I needed to figure out what was next for me. And so during that time, I really struggled to figure out what I was going to do.
(15:17):
Interior design never even entered my brain, which is so funny to me, but I think I had been so jaded by that conversation with my professor that it just didn't even feel like that was a pathway I could pursue at the time. But I had a lot of friends who were like, Nope, you need to do this. You're putting it out on Instagram. You're renovating the house that you're living in. Just take it, see what happens. And so that's what I did. By the time I put my camera away at the end of 2019, I decided that that was going to be, I was going to give it a year. We were going to see what was going to happen. I had my first official client, which was a coworker of my husband's, and I was going to just give it a year, and if it wasn't successful in a year, I was going to kind of tuck my tail between my legs and go back and get a corporate job and no one would be the wiser.
(16:07):
It would all be fine. Obviously, we all know what happened there. Covid happens in March, 2020. I was four or five months into a really small fledgling business where I didn't have a lot, I didn't really know what I was doing. To be really frank with you from a business perspective, I knew how to build a brand. I knew how to market myself, but in terms of the business of interior design, I didn't know what I was doing. But covid hit, we all sat in our houses for two months and looked around and realized we didn't like what we saw, and by the time we kind of all came out of quarantine, I had a client list that was bigger than I could have anticipated, and I hit the ground running and I have not really looked up since, honestly.
Shanna (16:56):
Okay. This is so amazing. With then the interior design business, how did you figure out, I mean, you're fully self-taught 100%, right? I mean, how did you figure out pricing and ordering and taking on clients, and was it all just word of mouth? Just walk me through those early days, and I love how amazing that timing of a big shift. I think a lot of things happen to make interior design the industry as a whole just continue shift in these last few years. So just walk me through those early days of interior design. Did you get a website app? How did you figure out pricing with taking on this huge roster of clients? What did you learn? Early days?
Melissa (17:45):
Yeah. I truthfully had no idea what it doing truly with humility. I had no idea what I was doing. I remember early days of Covid, while we were still all in quarantine, I sat down and I was like, I've got to build a website. The only content that I really had to kind of back that website was of my own home, and that was the home that we were living in and kind of added light architectural touches. It was mostly just furniture and styling. And I also remember in Instagram, I would sit down and I would do sort of a question and answer time period. I would take an hour a week and I would just sit down and go in front of my camera and do the thing that I really feel still uncomfortable doing, which is talking to the camera and answering questions that would kind of come my way.
Shanna (18:35):
Yes, same. Just prepare me with a question and I'm good, but on the fly.
Melissa (18:43):
Exactly, exactly. But those sort of things really allowed for my following on Instagram to grow to a point where I was starting to get inquiries based purely on Instagram. And I think there was a lot of, and I can say this now and I'm sorry for my past clients, but I think there was definitely an element of fake it till you make it mentality. I hate that. I truly hate that mentality, but I think that there was a level of, I thought I knew what I knew and then once I got into it, there was so much that I didn't know. So in the beginning, I priced myself very much like how I thought I would want to be charged as a client, which was a flat fee model for both design and project management. Obviously there are models where this works, but quite frankly, I just didn't have enough experience or know how to know how long projects would take and how easily they can go off the rails at times.
(19:44):
Really, to give that context, I had one project that ended up being three years in duration. It just wrapped last year where I charged them a $10,000 flat fee expecting that it would be a six month project. And so there's definitely, there's trickle down effects of course, for how that duration kind of lands, but I was also passing along the entirety of my trade discount, which in this industry is truly where the profit margins land. So time billing, the amount that we charge for design and project management are what covers our overhead, and then often that trade discount that we create as profit margins are what allow us to hire or do more exploratory things or open shops or things like that. So I was really just running a race for an amount of money that I would say was mostly fueled by passion at that point.
Shanna (20:40):
Yeah. Melissa, I have a quick question for you. Yeah. I'm interested of knowing your thoughts. So this is something I see a lot in a lot of different industries where you price a project fee, but the project gets bigger than you realize. I did this. Honestly, my first client was like this, and then I realized I was making negative 8 cents per hour, so that didn't work out so good. So I think what do you think about charging hourly and this might not work for interior design. I don't know. Sometimes I encourage clients to charge hourly, and again, I know that's a whole conversation with a client and they want to know kind of a budget range, but until you're able to estimate your hours better, I see so many people get in trouble with estimating hours when you're especially newer is really hard. So I'm interested in your thoughts if you have a take on that.
Melissa (21:35):
Yeah, honestly, that's what our pricing model is now, so we have found a lot of great success with that because of those elements of a project that we can't control, which oftentimes are client driven but also can be contractor driven or delay driven, lead time driven, all of those things that we just don't have any control internally on. So are the pricing model that truly does work for us is hourly billing for sure. Yeah,
Shanna (22:06):
And I always tell people as on the client side, and again, I don't know if this works clearly, I'm not interior designer, but I have worked service-based for a long time. I have a lot of service-based clients, so it's like I think for a client that can be scary. That's why people tend to go away from hourly pricing. I'm like, if you can give an estimate and then let them know, I think that's the thing. Our clients just want to know how to budget for it, give an estimate and then let them know if you're getting close though. Okay. Anyway, thank you for sharing. I was interested your take on that. I think that's a very common pitfall.
Melissa (22:39):
Yeah, and I agree with you. I think what we have found is that we need to give a percentage of basically an estimate of where someone's design fees might land, because I do think that there is that element of hourly charging that in someone's mind can be like, well, am I spending $10,000 or am I spending a hundred thousand dollars? The sky is really the limit when you're charging by the hour, do
Shanna (23:03):
You work fast or do you work slow?
Melissa (23:05):
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. Yep. So that's been a key for us.
Shanna (23:10):
So figuring out just the pricing side it sounds like has been helpful and growing your expertise as a designer.
Melissa (23:21):
Yes. Yeah, and I would say that none of that happened in a vacuum. It was definitely not information that I was able to just Google and find out that that is not something that's readily available online. I feel like I went through an education process of many different podcasts, interior design focused, and also just entrepreneurial focused, which is actually how I found your podcast, which just trying to absorb as much information and as much education as I could. And I also explored, there were some paid subscriptions that were more interior design focused, and all of those things spoke to processes that other people had developed for themselves, but also in an industry where there is no standard, and for most industries this is true too. So it really was figuring out what would work for Ojo and then also what kind of made sense and what didn't make sense. Where all the pieces really came together for me was my first full-time hire that really forced me to think more as a business owner instead of as a hobbyist, which was truly how I was running the business prior to having to make payroll.
Shanna (24:38):
Okay. So yeah, I was going to ask about any big turning points, shifts, pivots, anything you saw really catch on or a time when the business kind of caught fire. But tell me about when and why you brought on your first team member, how that looked, why you did that and when it was.
Melissa (24:58):
Yeah, so I think the impetus for really knowing I needed help because obviously it was just me up until that point, and I think I was having these sort of flashbacks to photography and feeling like I'm the only person who can do this. I'm the only person on my team if the worst happens. Obviously a wedding is a little bit different than construction, especially in duration, but still the same factor was sort of applying. I knew from the very get go of starting AHO that I wanted to build something much bigger than myself. So I always knew that this was the path that I was on. I just didn't, the timing felt uncertain to me. So I think I was working 60 or 70 hours a week. I was crying a lot. I truly was just going day to day, putting out fires instead of being able to really put strategic thought behind processes. It was survival at its very core
Shanna (26:03):
Of the amount of work.
Melissa (26:05):
Yes.
(26:07):
And honestly, the thing that kept me going was that I had somehow built a roster of clients that truly were life giving and truly were wonderful, and people that I wouldn't have wanted to leave in some sort of bad situation of me hitting a level of burnout or hitting some sort of brand ruining mistake that I couldn't walk back from. So that was the point in time where I knew something had to change because I couldn't continue on that way. And that was, gosh, when was that? That was 2021. Right around summer of 2021, I kind of put out a call on Instagram that I was going to be hiring and send me your resumes and received something on the order of 20 or 30 resumes, which was shocking to me. I felt internally like a big hot mess and that no one could possibly want to come in and work with that hot mess.
(27:07):
But I did. I put it out there and the minute Kate's resume kind of landed in my inbox, there was something there that I was like, I think it's her. And then I met with Kate and that was for me, I was like, yep, you're it. I really don't need to interview anyone else, but I did. But she really, Kate's hiring was really the turning point in my business and she had come to the firm with industry experience, firm experience, and so we were able to, once she was on board, she really did help fill in a lot of these gaps of all that education that I was trying to get. And she helped fill in some of the gaps of what good practices were, what bad practices were, and so we were able to form a business. She kind of walked into the hot mess, God bless her, and helped me clean it up really, which was beautiful. But it also came at a time where the vast majority of our, we had just swapped to hourly billing, so the vast majority of our projects really were still flat fee based. And so I was making payroll for her based on a flat fee model where that money was either already spent or gone.
(28:21):
That was a real learning time for me of knowing what is going to make a sustainable business, what do I need to do to make payroll? That was my pivot point for sure.
Shanna (28:33):
I love Melissa that you talked about this in hiring and there's two times I think in my business I've seen hiring a team forces you to get better workflows, better processes, clean things up. I think that's one of the beautiful byproducts that doesn't buy. I dunno if that's a byproduct, but that comes from that. And then for me, the second was I do a lot of education, I do a lot of teaching, and so that forced me even to get better at explaining what I do or cleaning up processes, and I love that you don't really think about that when you're hiring, but it's this cool refining time period where you have to create more processes. Okay, Melissa, so you have this flat fee model. The money's been spent long gone, you're still working on these projects. You have your team member. Tell me just in the last couple of years, so if that's 2021, the last couple of years how you've seen the business shift and grow and change, what do you feel like you were able to see, okay, this wasn't working and now we're figuring it out? I'd love to hear just about that growth after Kate has joined and I know you've hired some more people, you're in multiple locations. Talk me through the growth.
Melissa (29:56):
Yeah, that is, and actually I'm realizing that that was Kate's hire was in 2022, so that the duration of it being just me was really the end of 2019 through mid 2022. So anyway, sorry to correct that mistake, but the growth trajectory from there really, really, I don't know how to describe it other than it has been an absolute adventure. I think at that point I had worked to really build Ojo Interior's Instagram as a really good representation of us, and I had seen other, well, of course I've been following interior designers on Instagram for years, and there was always that gap of having a project sort of start or even not even seeing a project start for someone, but just seeing a final reveal of a project and not getting it to see any of the in-between process that happens in that, which is a lot, obviously the vast majority of the process, the pretty pictures at the end are 0.1% of what we actually do, and the rest of it is really just process driven and really just project management and making sure that we are serving our clients.
(31:13):
And so I started showing that on Instagram because I was seeing that there just was a hole for that, that very few people were showing that and also tried to do it with sort of the background of our personalities and Kate and I like to have a lot of fun together. So that I think is represented in our Instagram and that did tend to attract clients who knew who we were from the moment they came through our door, and that is something that I had discovered during my photography tenure that was such an important key piece of brand strategy for me that I carried with me into Ojo that really did allow us to hit the ground running once Kate joined and once we had the capacity to sort of serve clients in a more strategic way, it really allowed us to take on as much as we could to grow the business.
(32:08):
So between then and now obviously we have seen projects where it has, for a while we were just sort of wrapping up projects that I was doing by myself that I had designed, and so now in 2024, we really have been able to see the completion of projects that we have designed and worked on together, and that has been really beautiful, but the growth really for us has been on an internal level figuring out sort of what team members we need hiring for that. Last year in 2023, our team doubled in size. I also moved from Minnesota to Colorado, which was a sort of covid instigated desire to be closer to family. So Ojo effectively is in two places now. As of last Friday, we have another team member that will be joining us in two weeks for the Colorado team. So our teams are growing, we are buttoning up processes on the inside, but we have really worked hard to create those internal processes so that we can serve our clients better. But part of the growing pains of that really does come with a growing team and figuring out who's going to take on what roles, and also figuring out where our capacity lies. That obviously is always going to be a huge question as we move forward too.
Shanna (33:30):
Yeah, I love it. Melissa, I would love to hear with a background in finance, but a very different kind of finance, how have you felt like as a business owner figuring out the money side and the business side, what would you say came naturally to you or your background was helpful with, and then what were kind of the clunky moments of figuring out the money side, taking on a team, multiple locations, pricing models? It's a lot to learn.
Melissa (34:03):
It is. It is. And to be frank, the interior design business from a finance perspective or financial perspective is so much more of a behemoth than I could have ever really anticipated being effectively a pass through entity where we are making all of the purchases, but we are creating profit margins on those and then reselling those items to our clients. There's a lot of backend things that are happening there. I think where the clunkiness for us kind of set in was that I thought I could manage it. I thought my past experience would give me the skillset that I needed to sort of understand and manage the monetary aspect of the business. And what I was finding is that I was becoming the, I guess it's
Shanna (34:52):
Like the stick in the wheel kind of thing.
Melissa (34:54):
Exactly. I was the hangup for everything, and so I was the hangup in understanding is our freight flat fee enough to withstand what actual realities of freight are in this world or do we need to increase that? I was becoming the person that was hanging up process and honestly forward movement. So honestly, our best move last year really was outsourcing accounting. We found a interior design specific accounting firm that really has taken my internal mess in hangups and really has tried to work make that more seamless for us. Obviously there's still, as with every business owner, there's still so much input that has to go into just even weekly reconciling, but now we have someone who is able to look at our numbers strategically and say, yes, you're in a good place to hire now, or, Hey, no, you may want to wait to do that. And also is just making sure that our financials are matching because there is just a lot of money coming in, a lot of money going out and figuring out that if those numbers aren't reconciling, then that's a huge problem. So I took myself out of the equation. That was what effectively had to be. I kind of took the baggage that I had and took myself out of that equation.
Shanna (36:18):
Melissa, I think that's so interesting because yeah, you have a background that you would lend itself to be like, I get numbers, I understand it, and I always feel like my role in what I do now. So finance education is really to take the confusion out of the numbers and then to empower business owners to understand their numbers. But I always say, I don't want most, you're the CEO, you're the visionary of your business. As soon as you can get a numbers person on your team, I don't want to train CPAs and accountants. And I think knowing that you have to know enough to understand the numbers and be like, okay, this is working. This isn't the strategy, but now you have this team that can keep the numbers in check and make sure they're balancing and that's a lot of work, everything coming, especially in your business model, a lot of cash in and a lot of cash out, and if you're not kind of watching that, you're probably like, where's all my money going?
Melissa (37:23):
Yeah. Well, because there is in a business where there is a lot of lack of clarity, especially as we're buying trade specific items that can't be bought from retail locations. A client can't Google, well, they can Google what a pottery barn sofa costs, but they can't Google what a Lee industry sofa costs, and there's so much sort of mystery involved in that and that mystery, we have really worked really hard to make sure that we're creating a business that has a lot of integrity and a lot of viewpoint into why we charge the way that we do, but it is ultimately up to us to decide what our profit margins per item are. So whether we're creating a profit margin on labor that our window treatment workroom is doing, or whether we're creating a profit margin on actual furniture pieces, that's really up to us to determine. And all of those numbers change by the day sometimes and by the project really. And so having the ability to have someone else have eyes on that and know that, okay, so there was this piece arrived to our warehouse damaged, we had to pay $500 to repair that. That's a cost that we're likely going to eat because of X, Y, Z circumstances and having someone still have eyes on that to make sure that we're still
Shanna (38:49):
Profitable profiting. Exactly.
Melissa (38:51):
Yeah. There are times where you look at the numbers and it's in the item by item and you see red lines, you didn't make any money on that, and those are things that you think that's really shocking because we'd had a pretty decent profit margin on those things. So it is a behemoth of a thing, and I'm quite honestly so glad to be out of it because it was so much more than I could have ever handled myself for
Shanna (39:16):
Sure. In all of that, what would you say, and your background is the best thing that you have learned about money?
Melissa (39:26):
I feel like the best thing that I have learned about money is probably in reference to payroll. Honestly. Obviously hiring people can feel like a really scary thing, especially as you're kind of looking at the numbers and seeing what the cost of their salary may take out of what you have coming in. But what I have learned is that especially in hourly billing models, the people who are billing by the hour, typically what they are doing when you hire someone like that is that their hours are just adding to the overall revenue versus being someone who takes away someone. You need to basically have enough income there to, or sorry, revenue there to buffer their salary. Now, that's not true for everyone. Obviously when we're making operations hires or looking at hiring a social media person, it's hard to assign actual numbers there. But what I have learned really about money in this business is that when I'm looking to hire someone, a designer based position who is billing hourly to our clients, I can't view that as something that's going to take away from revenue. It really will be someone that boosts our revenue.
Shanna (40:41):
Yeah. Yeah. That's so helpful. I think hiring is such an intimidating cashflow. I mean, this cashflow is one of the biggest reasons businesses go out of business and making these commitments to other people to pay a paycheck. It is as scary and like you said, I love how you said, finding clarity and getting the numbers gives a lot of clarity, and I think that's one of 'em. Can I make this higher? How will they pay for themselves basically is so helpful. Okay. I want to ask one more question before we go into a quick fire round, and it's a little more on life work. So I really think in a world that asks us to do everything really well at home, at work, like you said, even as business owners we're wearing multiple hats, marketing, sales, designer, accountant, how have you found harmony or how are you working to find harmony or do you feel like you have any harmony between just work life and home life, especially as it sounds like you've dealt with some hard things and probably some wonderful things like life still happens while we're running a business. So what have you found has worked for you and kind of finding that place of harmony?
Melissa (42:08):
Yeah. I feel like this, and this kind of hits on something that I was told previous to being an entrepreneur, but really balance is an illusion We can spend so long, especially as women entrepreneurs chasing some illusion of a work-life balance, but we may truly never achieve what that looks like. What I really have found peace with and harmony in my life is really defining what my priorities are at any given moment and allowing the rest of it to fall into place. So really investing in those priorities been the rest of it just has to fall where it may, but it's not balance, it's peace, honestly. It's just the peace of knowing that the rest of it is going to fall and it's going to be okay as long as those priorities are taken care of and that at any given time can be our daughter.
(43:09):
We did start a family, we adopted our daughter and she is five, and it is a beautiful magical age, and at most of the time she's at the top of my list. But at times there have been occasions where I have had to prioritize client work over her Christmas program. Unfortunately this last year I was out of town for that doing an install in Iowa, and those are things that those are on my priority lists, and I had to at that time define what that priority was. So then I still try to make sure that I am investing as much into our daughter, making sure I'm watching the videos or talking afterwards, doing those things that really fill her bucket and also make me feel like I can still be involved, but also fulfilling what our clients do expect of us, which would be having being in their house before Christmas time. So sometimes those things compete, but I think making peace with that order of priorities at any given time.
Shanna (44:08):
Yeah, I think that's so beautiful and it's so true. Just naming your priorities and knowing that my words of the year for 2024 are savor and sprint, and I for a long time felt like I needed to kind of work at an even pace, have a similar schedule, and just recognizing that there are seasons where I savor, where I'm slower in business and just home more. There's seasons where I'm sprinting and just being okay with that's who I am and that's how I like to operate has been really helpful. And so thank you for sharing. I always love to hear how other people feel like they find that harmony or working towards finding that harmony because everybody does it so differently. Some people can mesh it all together really well. I need buckets. I need work time and home time. Yes. Okay. I love that. Melissa, thank you for sharing. Of course. Let's go into a quick fire round.
Melissa (45:15):
Sure.
Shanna (45:16):
Okay. What is one thing you would be embarrassed if people knew?
Melissa (45:22):
This one was so hard for me to answer because I just am an open book, but I have not publicly admitted this yet. I have to have another knee surgery this year that is something that I have kind of held close to my chest, but I tore my ACL again, so I have to have another knee surgery. So just delightful things of getting older.
Shanna (45:44):
Goodness. Well, good luck with your surgery.
Melissa (45:47):
Thank you.
Shanna (45:50):
Any regrets or wish you could do over moments?
Melissa (45:53):
Yeah, I do feel like I have had a lot of inner work and still have a lot to do about becoming a better boss to my employees, so I feel like I have a few regrets of lack of communication and lack of being, I guess, too much time invested in being a visionary and not enough time in being a manager. And so I am working on that
Shanna (46:14):
So hard. Yes, team is always such a big conversation on this podcast. Yeah, such a blessing. So refining for us. Okay. Yes. Big win or pinch me moment.
Melissa (46:27):
Yeah, this actually just happened very recently, but I was awarded the top 40 honor with the platform the Expert, which means that I'm in their top 20 most booked and best reviewed experts, which is an honor I didn't know was a thing. And also I'm just so blown away by
Shanna (46:47):
That's so exciting. Congratulations.
Melissa (46:49):
Thank you.
Shanna (46:51):
All right. Best advice or just really good advice that you have received?
Melissa (46:56):
I would say that the best singular piece of advice that I have received is that you don't have to sacrifice running a great business, even as a creative. I think that sometimes we lean into our creative businesses, lean into sort of that creative side and say like, I'm not good at running a business, but you really can be creative and serve your clients and still run a really profitable and also solid business.
Shanna (47:25):
Amen. I'm right there with you. I love that. That's why I do what I do every day and kind of like what you learned with photography and what you saw coming in the interior design business, but were able to hire Kate and make some changes. It's like running, I think, to the mindset of running a profitable, sustainable business. A solid business allows you to keep creating and at a pace that feels good, and that's what I'm so passionate about, helping people build those strong foundations because it's like this is what's going to keep you in business. Yeah. Okay. Last quick fire and then we'll send it off. What are you working on now or one resource that you would like to share?
Melissa (48:10):
Yeah, so we just launched a shop with Perold, so they are the luxury arm of Wayfair, and we are working on ways to curate selections for people who really want that ojo look, but can't necessarily afford to hire us for full service design.
Shanna (48:28):
That's so exciting. Is that out already?
Melissa (48:31):
It is out and it is a year long partnership with them. So we are working on ways to share that on our social media and say like, here are selections we would pick for a bathroom renovation. Here's what we'd pick for a living room refresh. So those things will be rolling out and they're very exciting and I hope people will really respond to that and love that.
Shanna (48:52):
Melissa, that's huge. Congrats.
Melissa (48:55):
Thank you. I'm
Shanna (48:56):
So excited. Okay, let's send it off with looking back, what would you tell yourself on day one? And I'm trying to think, I actually think I want to take it back to maybe the day you had that conversation with your professor. I don't know. Maybe I'll let you pick. Looking back, what would you tell yourself about getting into your interior design career, either when you had that conversation with your professor or when you were thinking about it, when you were quitting photography?
Melissa (49:26):
Yeah. I feel like those take two different brains for sure. I've always been a big believer in just trusting the path and knowing that what happens helps inform what happens in your future and all of those skills that you're building, even if the path looks the opposite of linear. So I would say I would really tell myself on day one to trust the path that is in front of you, whether that's windy or whether it's straight. But I also think that something that came from photography days is really just to value your time in a monetary way, because if you don't, no one else will. And for so long I thought that I could just do these things because it was my time and my time didn't cost me anything. But it sets a precedent that is really hard to work your way out, and it also is a mindset shift that prepares you to really value your time in a different way. And I think that that lends itself for finding harmony in life and finding so many other elements of running a sustainable business. But that is probably what, those are the two pieces I would tell myself on day one. Those are two pieces that I really struggled with for sure.
Shanna (50:50):
Yeah. Oh, those are so both really good and the value of your time. Yeah. Melissa, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story, your journey. Your work is beautiful, and it's just been so fun to get to know you.
Melissa (51:08):
It is same. I have very much enjoyed our time together, and I hope it's not our last, even just offline. You are quite a delay and I love your podcast, so it's such an honor to be here.
Shanna (51:20):
Thank you so much. Thanks for listening and yeah, I want to talk all things interior design forever.
Melissa (51:26):
Yeah, same.
Shanna (51:29):
Hey, wildflower, you just finished another episode of Consider the Wildflowers the podcast. Head over to consider the wildflowers podcast.com for show notes, resource links, and to learn how you can connect with Melissa. One final thought for today from William Morris, if you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it. Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. As always, thank you for listening. I'll see you next time.