Dear Dakota,

My biggest problem is not having SOP's in place, and already having a team of 3. We are bleeding time and money right now and it's so painful. I grew fast, and am finding myself drowning and needing to re-adjust everything to ensure we can continue to stay afloat. Help!

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Dear Dakota,

I just started my interior design business, and I’m struggling to figure out what services to offer. Should I offer full-service design right away, or something else? How do I know what people will want?

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The Dear Dakota blog series where I provide complimentary consulting and advice to interior designers is a members-only feature. If you’d like the ability to submit your questions and get the chance to have me answer them on the blog, please become a member of The DTS Files.

2025 will be a milestone year for me, God willing, because it is the year I will turn the same age my dad was when he lost his very short battle with cancer. 

He died when I was 17, and back then, 44 seemed SO old. My dad owned a popular restaurant and catering business and a beautiful home, had five kids, was happily married to my mom, and was a powerful, charismatic presence. 

Now, as I approach the same age, I realize just how young he was and how his life was really just beginning. 

Losing him at such a young age has given me a unique perspective on how precious my time is and has majorly impacted my priorities. It is also why I spend time every Friday reflecting on how I spend my time every single week. 

As I plan for 2025, I reviewed all my notes over the past year and noticed some consistent themes of things I didn’t enjoy or realizations I had that I ignored for MONTHS. 

And this is NOT the year for me to hold onto anything that does not serve me. 

So, in honor of my dad, one of my all-time favorite humans in the entire world and the person who has had the most significant impact on who I am today, here are the 11 things I’m saying BYEEEEE to in 2025. (in no particular order) …

In 2024, my team and I wrote 49 original blog posts for interior designers (this one makes it 50). That’s a big dip from 2023, when we wrote 90 original posts (based on our own experience!!). What can I say? We love nothing more than sharing insights to help interior designers improve their business operations and client experience.

While we didn’t write as many blog posts this year, we introduced plenty of new ways to help interior designers through our trainings in The Workroom. This year’s highlights included:

• Beyond Retail: Increase Revenue + Profits by Selling Wholesale Furnishings

• Elevate Your Design Presentation live training 

• Mastering Asana for Interior Designers

• Permits to Punchlists: Essential Construction Training, Management, & Pricing Tips for Interior Designers 

And I can’t forget to mention the three cohorts of our signature program, The Designed to Scale® Method. What an honor to help so many designers through my tried & true framework. 

If you haven’t had a chance to dive into those resources linked above, I highly recommend checking them out. In the meantime, don’t miss our 10 most popular blog posts of 2024. These are the posts that resonated most with our community of interior designers—each one thoughtfully crafted, 100% human-written, with no shortcuts or AI assistance here.

And, of course, a huge thank you for being here, reading my blog, The Weekly Install®, The Design Brief™, and my Instagram posts. 

YOU fuel everything we do.

Alright, let’s count down the top 10 posts of the year.

Dear Dakota,

Is it okay to stop growing my business?

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Dear Dakota,  

I am contemplating obtaining a 2-year interior design degree from a community college and would love your thoughts on whether the extra schooling would be worth my time. Although I am strong in many skills and have a Bachelor’s degree in another field, I do think I could benefit from the extra practice and knowledge that would be gained from school. How can I decide whether going back to school would be right for me?

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Dear Dakota, 

I am rebranding and restarting my practice. I have 15 years commercial and 15 years residential experience. I am promoting a modern european aesthetic. not quite caught on in my area.

In the meantime, I am teaming up/offering "as needed" services to fellow colleagues. This often means ghost-designing a project for another designer. Design services for $85/hour or admin ie. proposals and concept boards for $35/hour. 

However, in some cases, the designer is not tight on their process and it has made proposing a flat fee for my participation difficult. I am seeing a lot of shifts in scope. This has made it difficult to establish a starting deposit and billing process to ensure I have a stream of income. 

Ugggghhhhh! How do I wrangle fellow designers and manage consistent billing to them?

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