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Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio. This episode is brought to you in partnership with Loloi. Hi everyone, and welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I'm sitting down with Ali Henrie, founder of Ali Henrie Interiors, based in Utah. Most designers think about builders as a logistical relationship. Someone to coordinate with, someone to negotiate around, someone to manage. Ali Henrie thinks about builders as one of the most valuable business relationships a designer can have, and she has the pipeline to prove it. Before Ali launched her own studio, she worked directly for a builder as their in-house designer. That experience gave her a genuine understanding of how builders think, what they need, what slows them down, and what makes a designer genuinely easy and valuable to work with. When she eventually launched her own firm, she took everything she learned on that side of the table and built a system around it. Today, builders are one of Ali's biggest drivers of new clients. She has cultivated deep relationships with luxury builders across Utah, serves on the Utah Valley Homebuilders Association, and has chaired the Parade of Homes Committee, which means she is not just working alongside this community, she is embedded in it. In this episode, we are getting into exactly how she did it. What builders actually need from a designer, what designers often get wrong about that relationship, how Ali has built a system that makes her easy to work with, and how those relationships have compounded into a client pipeline. If you have ever wanted to crack the builder market, or if you have builder relationships that have never quite turned into the business you hoped, this conversation is going to give you a completely different way of thinking about it.

Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio. This episode is brought to you in partnership with Loloi. Welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today Melissa Oholendt of Oho Interiors is back for her second conversation on this show. Melissa launched Oho Interiors in 2019 after a career that moved from corporate finance to wedding photography to interior photography to design. She has been featured in Architectural Digest, House Beautiful, Rue, Homes and Gardens, and the Wall Street Journal. She runs a nine-person studio spread across offices in Minneapolis and Black Forest, Colorado. We have covered trade vendor relationships and procurement with Melissa before, and I encourage you to go back and listen to that episode. But today we are talking about how she has grown this firm, the strategy behind it, what she has done well, what she has gotten wrong, and most importantly, the philosophy that underpins all of it: the idea that the best sales process is one the client never feels is happening. From her social media and marketing all the way through to the final client experience, Melissa has built a system that creates trust and buy-in at every touchpoint. Today she is going to walk us through exactly how that works.

Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio. This episode is brought to you in partnership with Loloi. Welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today's guest needs absolutely no introduction - Shea McGee is back.  For those of you who were with us in Season 1, you know we had Shea on back in 2022, and that episode remains one of the most listened-to conversations in the show's history. A lot has happened since then. McGee & Co. has grown into one of the most recognizable home furnishings brands in the country. There have been books, major brand collaborations with Kohler, Ann Sacks, Target, The Shade Store, and more. And her debut cookbook, Around the Table, just released this spring. But what I find most fascinating about Shea's story is not the scale of what she has built, it’s how she built it. Before there was a team, a Netflix show, or a product line, there was a blog with a consistent and deliberate way of showing up that made people feel like they knew her before they ever reached out. That instinct didn’t just build an audience, it built a brand where the right clients arrive already sold. That is exactly what we are unpacking today. What it means to build a brand-led studio, the editorial decisions that create authority before anyone picks up the phone, how the client conversation changes as your brand grows, and what Shea's return to writing on Substack says about the staying power of long-form content. There are lessons in Shea's evolution that apply to designers at every stage.

Celebrate a decade of IDCO Studio with 10 days of 30% off site-wide. Use code DECADE30 at www.idco.studio today to lock in your savings. Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio. Welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I am sitting down with two people whose business model sits at the intersection of residential design and hospitality ownership. Katie Labourdette-Martinez and Olivia Wahler are sisters-in-law and co-founders of Hearth Homes Interiors, a full-service residential interior design studio based in Santa Barbara. They started together in 2017 in a staging business, developed a reputation for honoring the character of older homes, and eventually pivoted their business entirely to full-service design. In 2023 they founded Hearth Hospitality Group alongside Olivia's brothers Lucas and Julian and their longtime friend Jason. They now own and operate three historic inns and two restaurants across Santa Barbara, with Hearth Homes Interiors as the design arm for all of it. The Craft House Inn was included in Goop's best of Santa Barbara guide, named one of the Best Hotels in Santa Barbara in the 2024 Sunset Travel Awards, and their design work has been featured in Luxe, Sunset, Modern Luxury, and Rue. The Hearth philosophy is simple: honor what came before, and create spaces with an unmistakable sense of place. Today we are discussing what it means to design across both residential and boutique hospitality, and what other design studios can learn and implement into their own business.

Celebrate a decade of IDCO Studio with 10 days of 30% off site-wide. Use code DECADE30 at www.idco.studio today to lock in your savings. Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio. Welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I am sitting down with someone I've really been looking forward to getting to know — Sean Anderson. Sean grew up in rural Mississippi, where his mother encouraged his love of art long before he ever thought of it as a career. He never went to design school. He started in Memphis in his thirties with a small circle of loyal clients and word of mouth, and he's said that he considers every day in this industry an education — that every install is still his final exam. Since founding his namesake studio in 2013, Sean Anderson has grown into offices in both Memphis and New York. His work has been featured in Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, Milieu, Garden and Gun, and Departures. He's been named to the 1stDibs 50 and the Wallpaper 400. And this fall, he's releasing his debut monograph with Rizzoli, Interior Narratives — with a foreword by architect Jeffrey Dungan, text by Sam Cochran, and photography by his longtime collaborator, Haris Kenjar. We are getting into all of it today. What it actually took to build a two-city practice from a standing start in Memphis. The creative partnerships — with an architect, a writer, a photographer — that shaped this book and his business. And for every designer who has a book on their vision board, the real, unglamorous path to publication from the inside. Seans Andersons book, Interior Narratives, is now available!

Celebrate a decade of IDCO Studio with 10 days of 30% off site-wide. Use code DECADE30 at www.idco.studio today to lock in your savings. Tiffany Piotrowski is back, and this time we are digging into her studio’s 100 image exercise. This episode relies heavily on the video portion of it, as Tiffany generously shows us physical examples of what she’s explaining. If you are not already watching this on Patreon or YouTube, pause, and head over there. Subscribing on Patreon gets you access to not only the full video conversation to this and all episodes, it also gains access to 2 additional episodes per month, exclusive to Patreon subscribers. Supporting the podcast directly is what makes it possible to keep this show running, and we have a lot more of it coming. Tiffany is the founder of Tiffany Leigh Design, a full-service studio based in Barrie, Ontario, known for its English-inspired interiors, layered materiality, and a deeply thoughtful approach to understanding what home means to each client. Tiffany is a close personal friend, and in one of our industry group texts, she mentioned this concept of a 100 Image Exercise. Immediately I knew we needed to record a show about it. In her process, Tiffany has developed what she calls a Dream and Scheme Meeting, a structured first meeting with every new client that goes far beyond the standard questionnaire. It has four parts, it happens in person at her studio, and it is designed to surface the things a client would never think to write down. One of the centerpieces of that meeting is the 100 image exercise, something she learned from Melissa Oholendt of Oho Interiors and has since made her own. Today she is walking us through the whole thing, and she is doing a live demo on camera. The 100 image exercise itself: how her team curates and prints 100 images for every client, and why the physical, printed format matters more than a digital slideshow. The exact printer she uses: https://a.co/d/0hL48rkV

Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio. Welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I'm sitting down with someone whose career trajectory is genuinely one of a kind in this industry. Britany Simon grew up around construction, the daughter of a residential developer in Arizona. She earned a degree in interdisciplinary studies with a concentration in business and interior design, and spent years working in some of the top design firms in the state before landing her big break on HGTV.  After gaining national recognition as a runner-up and fan favorite on Design Star, she went on to appear on multiple design-focused television programs, developing a strong media presence alongside deep technical expertise. In 2015, she launched Britany Simon Design House, which she has since grown into a highly respected boutique studio known for its elevated client experience, strong internal systems, and thoughtful approach to scaling a design business. Today we are covering what those years on set taught her about delivering under pressure, and how those same instincts became the foundation for a client process that protects her time, her margins, and her relationships. We are going step by step, phase by phase, because a well-structured client experience is the difference between a busy studio and a profitable one.

Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio. Welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I am sitting down with Claire Staszak, founder and principal of Centered by Design, a full-service residential interior design studio based in Chicago specializing in the design and restoration of historic homes. Claire came from journalism and marketing before she came to interiors, and that background has shaped everything about how she has built her firm, including how she thinks about showhouses. Most designers treat a showhouse as a client opportunity, but Claire treats it as a brand investment with a measurable return. She has done both local and national showhouses and built a team that helps make it all happen. Her work has been featured in Architectural Digest, House Beautiful, Domino, Luxe, and the Chicago Tribune. She has a studio and showroom in East Lakeview, a second design annex on the North Shore, a wallpaper collection with Isidore Leroy, and a debut book slated for Fall 2027. Today we are getting into the real costs of a showhouse, the brand partnerships that make them financially viable, what local versus national showhouses actually produce for a studio, and what every designer should be thinking about before they say yes to the next one.

Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio. Welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I'm sitting down with Emily Del Bello, founder of Emily Del Bello Interiors, a New York City-based residential design studio known for interiors that are layered, collected, and deeply personal. Earlier this season, we had a conversation that stayed with me. A designer who made the deliberate choice to leave a major market, to build something intentional in a smaller city, and to grow a studio on her own terms away from the noise. Today we are going in the opposite direction. Emily Del Bello grew up in a small town in Indiana, and she moved to New York City. And New York, as anyone who has tried to build something there knows, does not make it easy. It is a market with an almost intimidating depth of design talent, a client base that arrives at the first meeting already knowing exactly what they love, and a competitive landscape that will expose every gap in your confidence, your process, and your point of view. And she built a studio that thrives inside it. In this episode, we are getting into exactly how she did it. The leap from the Midwest, the early years of figuring out New York, what it actually costs, financially, creatively, personally, to establish yourself in this market, and what it looks like to serve clients who are as design-literate as the city they live in. We will also get into the evolution of her studio beyond client work, including her fabric and lighting collaborations, and what that expansion has meant for the business.If you have ever looked at a major market and wondered whether there is room for you, this conversation is for you.

Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio. Welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I'm sitting down with Nicole Fisher, founder of Nicole Fisher Interiors, a residential design studio now based in New York City. Before Nicole was designing homes, she was dressing Lady Gaga.She started her career in fashion, working as a stylist under Brandon Maxwell and Nicola Formichetti. That level of intentionality around detail, character, and originality didn't leave her when she transitioned into interior design. It became the entire foundation of how she works. And that foundation has never been more relevant than right now. Because we are living through a moment in this industry where AI tools, algorithmic feeds, and the sheer volume of visual content being produced are creating a kind of aesthetic gravity — a pull toward the same. And the designers who are going to thrive in that environment are the ones who built something so specific and so genuinely theirs that no algorithm could have produced it. Nicole is one of those designers. She's been named to Luxe's inaugural NEXT list, featured in Architectural Digest, and after ten-plus years of building her firm in Hudson, New York, she's moving her studio back to the city where her career began. In this episode, we're talking about all of it. The fashion years, what that world taught her about building a visual identity, how she thinks about originality as a business strategy, and what designers need to understand about protecting their creative point of view in an era of algorithmic sameness. This is a conversation about creativity as a competitive advantage.

Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio. Hi everyone, and welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I'm sitting down with Trish Lynn, founder and principal designer of Colette Interiors, a full-service residential studio based in Chatham, New Jersey. I want to ask you something before we get into this episode. When you picture your next hire, what do you picture? Someone fresh out of a design program? Someone who's already worked at another firm? Someone whose portfolio you can scroll through? What if the best person for the job has never held a design title in their life? Trish Lynn has built a six-person studio in one of the most competitive residential markets in the country — and she did it by hiring people with backgrounds in editorial, teaching, nursing, and finance alongside her design team. Before she launched Colette Interiors, she spent years in the corporate world, which meant she came to team-building with something most designers have to figure out entirely on their own: a real framework for what makes a person the right fit, and the confidence to look for it outside the obvious places. In this episode, we're unpacking all of it. What those non-traditional backgrounds actually contribute to a design studio. How Trish hires for the qualities that don't show up in a portfolio. How she onboards someone into a creative process when they're coming from a completely different industry. And how she leads in a way that makes strong people want to stay. If you've ever felt like you're hiring from a very small pool — or like every hire you've made has been a version of yourself — this conversation is going to open something up for you.

Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio. Hi, and welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I'm thrilled to welcome back one of the most business-savvy designers working right now — and one of the most generous guests we've ever had on this show. If you were here for Zoë's first episode, you know she walked us through her six-step design process with a level of clarity and detail that genuinely stopped designers in their tracks. The questions kept coming, and honestly, so did mine. So when I started thinking about who I wanted back in Season 8, Zoë was at the top of my list. Zoë Feldman is the founder of Zoë Feldman Design, a studio with offices in both Washington DC and New York City, specializing in high-end residential interiors with a signature approach. She's been featured in Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, House Beautiful, and more — and beyond the press, she has spent years methodically building a studio that doesn't just produce beautiful work. It operates like a real business. In this episode, we're talking about something that every designer hits at some point in their growth: how do you build a service structure that captures the right clients, at the right level, without compromising your brand or burning out your team? Zoë has done exactly that. She runs a full-service design offering for complex, high-investment projects. She recently launched Demi, a design-forward but operationally lighter service tier for clients who don't need full project management. And she's the most-booked designer on The Expert platform on the entire East Coast. How she built all three of those things — how she prices them, positions them, staffs them, and protects the quality across all of them — is what we are getting into today. This one is going to be a masterclass.

Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio. Welcome back to The Interior Collective. I’m your host, Anastasia Casey, and today I’m joined by someone whose story I think is going to resonate deeply with so many of you who are building businesses outside of the obvious design epicenters. Emily Tucker is the founder of Emily Tucker Design, a full-service residential studio headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, with projects across the country. With a degree in Architecture and Planning from the University of Colorado Boulder and nearly a decade spent training under Kelly Wearstler, Steven Gambrel, and Ruthie Summers in Los Angeles and New York, Emily returned to Colorado in 2015 with a clear vision and a serious pedigree. She has since built one of the most respected design studios in her region, working on large-scale custom residential projects and earning a spot on Luxe’s Gold List — and just this year, she was named a Luxe ‘NEXT’ Designer for 2026. What makes Emily such a compelling voice for this community is her willingness to talk about the business of design with real honesty. Today we’re diving into what it actually looks like to build a thriving firm in a smaller market, navigating the realities of non-linear growth and unpredictable pipelines, and why the economics of a great project start long before any furniture is selected. We’re talking client alignment, budget stewardship, the right team, and what it means to do this work sustainably. If you’ve ever wondered how to grow beyond the market you’re in, or how to weather the slow seasons without losing your footing, this conversation is for you.

Season 9 of The Interior Collective Podcast is brought to you by Materio. Hi, and welcome back to The Interior Collective. I'm your host, Anastasia Casey, and I'm so glad to have a returning guest with us today. Julia Miller is the founder and creative director of Yond Interiors, a full-service residential design studio based in Minneapolis that serves clients across the country. Her work has been featured in Architectural Digest, The Wall Street Journal, RUE, Sunset, and more, and she's been recognized by House Beautiful's Next Wave and The Expert Top 40. Beyond Yond, Julia is the co-founder of Brunel, a custom furniture shop rooted in craftsmanship, and the founder of The Studio Table — a mentoring program built around the real operations of a working design firm. When Julia came back to the show, we had planned to dig into the systems and process side of her practice. But in the lead-up to this conversation, she brought up something she felt was even more foundational — and honestly, I couldn't agree more. Today we're talking about creative mindset: what it actually takes to get into the frame of mind to do your best work, how to protect that creativity throughout the lifecycle of a project, and what happens when the pressure of running a business starts to crowd out the thing that made you want to do this in the first place. This one is a little different, a little more personal, and I think it's going to resonate deeply. S2 E5: The Logistics of Distance Design Yond Interiors Brunel Studio Table The Interior Collective: Website | Youtube IDCO Studio: Website | Instagram Kwin Made: Website | Instagram Design Camp: Website | Instagram

This episode is brought to you in partnership with Dezign Assist. Today on The Interior Collective, I'm sitting down with Reed Humphrey, co-founder of Alder & Tweed, one of the largest residential interior design firms in the country, and the founder of Dezign Assist, the platform helping interior designers grow their team at a fraction of the cost. Reed built Alder & Tweed alongside his sister Heather, carved out a niche in luxury second-home and vacation destination design, and scaled the firm to a team that now relies on more than 20 remote junior designers to support projects across the country. That staffing model didn't come from a business book. It came from hitting a very real wall inside his own firm, recognizing that the way most design studios hire was making growth unnecessarily expensive and unnecessarily painful, and deciding to solve it differently. What he built became Dezign Assist. And today we're going to get into all of it: the problem it was designed to solve, who these designers actually are, how to integrate remote support into a studio without losing your standards or your client experience, and what it really means to build a team that lets you get back to the work only you can do. If you've ever talked yourself out of hiring because you couldn't justify the cost, this episode is going to reframe that conversation entirely.