Dear Dakota | What Steps do I Need to Take to Build a Team for my Interior Design Business?

Mar 14

©️ Dakota Design Company 2017-2025 | All rights reserved. This content may not be reproduced, distributed, or used without permission.

Written March 2023 | Updated January 2025

DESIGNER SUBMITTED QUESTION

“In order, what steps do I need to take to be able to move forward and grow and build a team to help me realize my income goal and dream interior design business?”

My advice:

There is a certain process to follow when building your business with the goal of having a team (some of my designers don’t want a team and want to stay small with just themselves and maybe one assistant).

Below are the five steps I recommend you follow (in order!) to sell your design services, bring on help, and grow your company.

Five steps to take in order to realize your interior design business goals.

Five steps to sell your design services and grow your business

You have to have profitable services that align with your ideal clients. The most successful designers we've worked with have clearly defined services that clients can easily understand. More on that here.
Next, continue to sell those services, refine them, and get better results for your clients. This will allow you to increase your price AND improve efficiency.
Then, once you can do everything in your service manually, you can formalize it by creating assets for your process, incorporating software (like a CRM-HoneyBook is our ALL TIME FAVE for interior designers), and creating SOPs (standard operating procedures) like these.
Once you have clear services and your SOPs dialed in, it will be easy to see who to hire to help you deliver your services. Bring them in and delegate the parts of the process you don't like to do. Have them follow the formalized process and use the assets you created so everything is exactly how you want it. For more on who to hire first, click here, and here for our Designed to Scale® Hiring Blueprint.
Finally, with your newfound freedom, you can focus on the revenue-generating work that will help you to attract projects you love doing most, and you can begin to shift your marketing to speak to only those types of projects. You could even step back from the day-to-day and become the creative director, focusing on building your team and growing the company.