Let's start with your background. For designers new to your work, can you tell us about your design firm and how you ended up focusing so heavily on the business side of interior design?

I've been designing for sixteen years now and had two offices on both coasts. I have scaled back now to just one office and take on only several select projects each year. That's important to say upfront because I'm not a former designer turned business coach. I'm an active designer who spends more time working with other designers now, but I'm still in the work. Still designing homes. Still managing projects and vendors and clients.

That perspective matters because everything I teach comes from real current experience, not nostalgia or theory.

When I was about seven years in, I hit a wall. The firm was successful. My design work was getting published. Clients loved what I was creating. But I was exhausted. Working weekends. Not making the money that matched the caliber of work I was doing. And I was frustrated because I couldn't figure out why.

That's when I started getting obsessed with the business side. I looked at my processes, my pricing, my contracts, the way I was structuring projects. And I saw the gaps everywhere. Not in my design ability. In my business foundation.

Once I fixed those things, everything changed. Profit went up. My hours went down. I could actually take on projects I genuinely wanted to design instead of projects that paid the bills. The business structure made everything better, including the design itself.

Around that same time, I started noticing something. I'd be at a Market or in conversations with other designers, and I'd get DMs and texts. Designers asking me questions. What are you doing differently? How did you think of that? How are you structuring this? It became clear there was a real need, and I hadn't formalized it yet.

So I started coaching. Then The McClain Method Podcast. Then Bright Lens Studio for positioning and visibility. But I never stopped designing. Because honestly, I didn't want to. And I wouldn't have the credibility or the real-world perspective I have now if I had.

The shift wasn't abandoning design. It was expanding into teaching while staying active in my own work. That way I'm not telling designers something I used to do ten years ago. I'm living it right now. Every project teaches me something that informs how I work with the designers I coach.

That's where the focus on the business side came from. I realized I was accidentally becoming an expert in what most designers avoid, while still being an active designer myself.

You talk a lot about contracts and scope. Was there a specific client experience that really shaped how you approach those things now?

Oh yes. I still remember it much too clearly. Early in my career, I landed what I thought was a dream client. Big house. Big budget. Big confidence. I was excited and honestly a little intimidated.

I made the classic mistake. I trusted verbal agreements. I assumed we were aligned. I didn't have a written agreement. And I let my enthusiasm and trustworthiness replace legal clarity.

That project unraveled fast. Suddenly there were accusations about money, approvals that were never documented, and panic about purchases that had already been made. I remember sitting in my car after one particularly awful call, hands shaking, thinking, "I might actually lose everything over this." For all the gory details, listen to episode one of my podcast, The McClain Method.

What I learned was simple but profound. Clients don't create chaos. Ambiguity does.

From that moment on, everything changed. My agreements became extremely clear, detailed, and unapologetic. Scope is defined. Procurement terms are explicit. Payment timing is non-negotiable. Change orders require written approval. Transparency protects everyone.

Strong systems don't make you rigid. They make you safe. For both you and the client.

I see so many designers hesitating to be specific in their agreements because they think it sounds cold or rigid. It's actually the opposite. Clear agreements mean you can be warm and generous with clients because you're not secretly worried you're getting taken advantage of.

Through your coaching work, what are designers struggling with the most right now?

Three things, consistently.

First is pricing confidence. Most designers I work with are underpricing significantly. Not because they're not talented enough or confident enough in the work. They're underpricing because they don't have a clear profit strategy. They're guessing. They're looking at what someone else charges and cutting their own rate to compete. They're tracking time like they have to justify every hour. And all of that creates uncertainty.

Second is understanding the difference between revenue and profit. I'll meet with a designer who says, "I did a two-hundred-thousand-dollar project." Great. But I ask how much of that was actual profit. Crickets. They don't know. They know they worked hard and their bank account has some money, but they can't see where money actually went or where it leaked away.

The leaks are usually happening in procurement services. That's the area where most designers have no clarity on actual cost versus what they're charging. It's a gap between what they think they're making and what they're actually making.

Third is systems. Designers have incredible creativity and no process. They manage every project differently. Communication happens via text and email and phone calls scattered everywhere. Invoices get lost. Change orders aren't documented. Installation mistakes happen because no one wrote down the specifications. Then they hire someone to "get organized" but they don't actually define what organized means first.

The business side of interior design isn't complicated. It's just unfamiliar. Most designers never learned it. They went to design school to learn aesthetics, not accounting. So when they hit a ceiling where they can't grow without fixing the business foundation, they panic.

The good news is once you see it, it's fixable. Fast.

What's the most interesting or complex project you've worked on, and what did it teach you about systems?

I worked on a whole-home renovation for a luxury property for some truly lovely clients who actually valued the role of an interior designer. Now this project was not just interior design. We coordinated structural work, custom millwork, sourcing pieces from multiple countries, working with an architect, managing a general contractor, dealing with building permits and timelines that kept shifting.

On the surface, it was a dream project. Beautiful home. Clients who had good taste and the right investment to execute at the highest level. But logistically it was a nightmare. So many moving parts. Decisions that cascaded into other decisions. Vendor coordination across different time zones.

Early in my career, I would have managed that project on instinct and email. I would have been the central hub keeping everything together in my head. And I would have been stressed the entire time.

By that point in my business, I had systems. I had a project timeline that mapped out every decision point. I had communication schedules so the client knew when to expect updates and how we were staying on track. I had vendor workflows that made sure every trade knew what they needed to know. I had a procurement tracking system so I could see where money was going and catch problems before they became expensive problems.

That project taught me something important: complexity doesn't create chaos if you have structure. In fact, the more complex the project, the more critical the systems become. Because that's when mistakes are expensive. That's when timeline slippage costs real money. That's when miscommunication turns into resentment.

I realized that my processes weren't bureaucracy that slowed things down. They were the only thing that allowed me to manage something that complex while staying sane.

You've also published a book. What was that experience like, and how did it impact your business?

I wrote a book called "The Designer Within." The whole concept came from thinking about how much I loved design as a kid. I was actually obsessed with it. But I had no idea where to actually begin. How do you go from loving something to actually doing it?

So I wrote the book to my twelve year old self. But really, I wrote it to every armchair designer out there. People who love design but can't or don't want to bring in a professional designer. Instead of pretty pictures with no substance, I share my actual design process. Real tips. Real thinking. I wanted to arm people with the right tools, not just inspiration they can't execute.

It's not just a beautiful coffee table book. It's a working book.

Finding a publisher was a different path than I expected. I didn't self-publish. I found Gibbs Smith, who publishes interior design and many other creative adjacent books. They took a chance on me and signed the book. That process taught me so much about the publishing world, the book industry, and how to think about a manuscript as a product.

Here's what surprised me about publishing: the book gave me validity in the world that I honestly already had in myself. That's a weird thing to admit. I knew my work was good. I knew my process was solid. But there's something about a book with your name on it that changes how people perceive you. Doors open. Bigger platforms invite you to speak. Coaching clients come already educated about your philosophy.

I learned that a book is not a moneymaker. Anyone thinking they're going to write a book and live off the royalties is going to be disappointed. But as a marketing tool and a credibility builder? That's where the real value is.

Publishing the book forced me to articulate things I'd been doing intuitively for years. When you write about something, you have to be clear. You can't be vague. And that clarity became part of everything I teach now. It filtered into The McClain Method. It shaped how I coach. It informed my thinking about what designers actually need.

I would tell any designer thinking about publishing: do it for the clarity it creates in your own mind first, and the positioning second. If you're only doing it for the authority it might bring, you'll quit halfway through. But if you're writing because you have something real to say, something that came from your actual work and experience, then it's worth doing.

What inspired you to start the podcast, and what do you love about it?

Honestly, it wasn't some grand plan from the beginning. The podcast came about because so many designers continued to reach out to me and I found myself having a great answer (I say that humbly but accurately). It became clear that there was a real need for the conversation, but I hadn't really formalized it yet.

I started The McClain Method Podcast in 2023 because I realized these questions weren't just about pricing or contracts. They were bigger. Designers were asking about identity, about what success actually means, about how to pivot when something isn't working anymore.

The business side matters. But it's not separate from the soul side. A designer can have perfect systems and still be miserable because they're not designing the life they actually want. That's not a business problem. That's an alignment problem.

I started with solo episodes because I wanted to think through these ideas out loud. But quickly I realized there was power in bringing other voices into the conversation. Now we do a mix of solo episodes and interviews, and I'm pretty intentional about who I talk to. I'm picking people whose work and thinking actually align with these values around systems, clarity, and soul-aligned decision making.

What I love most about the podcast is the closing question. Before we wrap each interview, I ask every guest: what would you tell your younger self just starting out? I have dozens of these answers now, and every single one is different. The wisdom is all different. I'm actually compiling all of those responses into one full episode soon, and I'm genuinely excited about that because the variety of perspectives is so valuable.

What I love most is that these conversations normalize the struggle. Designers who've listened and completely restructured their businesses. Designers who've realized they were chasing someone else's definition of success. Designers who decided to pivot entirely and did it without shame.

The podcast also keeps me honest. I'm constantly thinking through these ideas, testing them, refining them. It's the place where my teaching gets real, not polished.

You also started Bright Lens Studio. Tell us about that and what's happening there.

Bright Lens Studio came from seeing the same issue over and over with designers I worked with. They had beautiful projects, strong businesses, and real talent, but their visibility didn't match the level of their work.

Most designers approach marketing the same way they approach business before they have systems. It's reactive. Scattered. Trend-chasing. Posting because they feel like they should. Trying to be everywhere instead of intentional anywhere.

That kind of visibility is exhausting. And for most designers, it's also not sustainable or even feasible alongside real client work.

Bright Lens is built on a different philosophy. We focus on the right audience, not the biggest audience. Strategy before content. Clear positioning and messaging before you ever worry about posting frequency.

We help designers build visibility in a way that actually fits into their real lives and real businesses. No daily posting pressure. No constant performance. No marketing plan that only works if you're glued to your phone.

Instead, we focus on systems that quietly do the heavy lifting. Websites that convert. Messaging that carries across platforms. Content that can be repurposed and reused without starting from scratch every week.

In many ways, Bright Lens is the visual and positioning side of The McClain Method. Same philosophy. Same emphasis on clarity and systems. Just applied to how designers show up publicly.

Let's talk about AI and technology. How do you see it changing how interior designers run their businesses?

Most designers are terrified that AI is going to replace them. I think they're looking at it wrong.

AI isn't replacing designers who know how to design. AI is making it irrelevant if you're just okay at what you do. Which means the designers who win are going to be the ones who combine real creativity with business systems. Who use AI to automate the administrative stuff so they can focus on clients and vision.

Think about what AI can handle: email management, project scheduling, data entry, invoice organization, repetitive communication. Those things don't require taste or judgment. They require consistency. That's exactly what AI is good at.

What it can't do is sit with a client and understand what they're really looking for. It can't make the hard call about design direction. It can't manage relationships or navigate personality conflicts. That's the work that matters. That's the work that justifies the price you charge.

Now, I'll say this about the visual side of AI. Yes, AI can generate renderings. Clients love renderings. But here's what I know from experience: a client cannot hand an AI rendering to a contractor and have them follow through with no issues. It's not possible. The rendering is one thing. Implementation is everything else.

AI renderings will weaken bad designers and elevate great ones. Great designers will use AI renderings as a communication tool with clients and as a starting point for their own thinking. Bad designers will lean on renderings as a substitute for actual design thinking. And clients will know the difference.

So the designers who are smart about this are using AI to eliminate the busywork and enhance their communication. That frees them to be better designers and better business owners. They're working less, making more, and delivering better work because they're not exhausted.

The competitive advantage is going to go to designers who embrace systems and tools, not the ones who resist them.

You emphasize that processes equal profit. Why is that so critical, especially in luxury design?

Because luxury is expensive. Your margins need to protect you from complexity.

When you're working with high-value projects, small mistakes are big problems. A design decision that shifts affects a five-hundred-thousand-dollar procurement budget. A timeline misunderstanding cascades into contractor delays and premium rush fees. A client expectation that wasn't documented at the start becomes a scope change that eats into profit.

Systems prevent those things. Clear project phases. Defined decision points. Written specifications. Communication schedules. They sound rigid, but they actually protect your creative freedom because you're not constantly managing fires.

The other part is margin. You can't build a real profit margin without knowing where your money is going. Most designers think they're building thirty percent profit and they're actually building eight percent. That's because they don't have systems that track procurement costs, labor hours, overhead allocation, and client payments.

Once you have visibility into those numbers, you can make intentional pricing decisions. You can see that certain clients are more profitable than others. You can see which projects drain resources relative to what they pay. You can actually design your business instead of letting it happen to you.

Luxury clients also expect a smooth process. They're paying premium prices. They expect a premium experience. That means organized communication. Clear timelines. Predictable check-ins. Professional handling of everything from contracts to installations. Systems deliver that. Chaos doesn't.

Give us the real talk on procurement services. How do designers actually make money here without burning out?

First, let's retire the word markup. I know why people use it, but I hate it. It makes what we do sound like we're standing behind a cash register, not leading a high-touch service. It's procurement services. That's what it is. Let's call it that.

And here's the truth: most designers think about procurement the wrong way. They treat it like a simple percentage on cost, instead of what it actually is: a revenue strategy inside the business.

Let's make it real.

Say you're furnishing a project and the product total is fifty thousand dollars. You apply the classic thirty-five percent markup and you think you just made around eighteen thousand dollars. Sounds good. Sounds easy.

Sounds cute, until you look at what that eighteen thousand actually costs you in time.

Because procurement isn't ordered and done. It's sourcing, curating, quoting, presenting, revising, chasing vendors, handling lead times, tracking shipments, answering client texts you should not be answering, coordinating delivery, managing damages, solving install day chaos, and keeping everybody calm while you silently want to move to a remote island.

If that took you two hundred hours, and honestly it often does, that's about ninety dollars an hour.

That's not luxury. That's employment with better throw pillows.

So what do you do instead?

You price procurement services based on what it really includes. You map the work, end to end. Curation and sourcing time. Selection meetings and revisions. Ordering and payment processing. Vendor management and follow-up. Freight, receiving, and delivery coordination. Install oversight. Client communication through the entire thing.

Then you charge like a professional who's running a business, not like someone hoping it works out at the end.

Some designers charge a flat procurement fee. Some bill hourly on top of product cost. Some use a blended model with a creative fee plus procurement services. I too have my own method that I swear by. The model isn't magic. Being very clear is the magic.

You need to know what's included. What's not included. What costs extra. What your profit margin actually is. What you're being paid for the time you're spending.

Burnout shows up when you're doing a mountain of invisible work and pretending it's just part of the project.

One client change order turns into rework. One vendor mistake turns into hours of cleanup. One install issue turns into you becoming a free project manager. And if you didn't track it, plan for it, or charge for it, you just paid for it.

So yes, systems matter here.

Standardize your procurement workflow. Use tools that show your numbers clearly. Put your procurement terms in writing. Define what's included, define what's billable beyond the baseline, and stop winging it because you're afraid your client won't like it.

Good clients respect clarity. They don't respect vagueness followed by resentment.

The designers making real money in procurement services are not the ones who hustle harder. They're the ones who treat procurement like a repeatable system with real pricing and clear boundaries. They know exactly what they're doing. They know exactly what they're making. And they don't lose money on invisible work because they stopped pretending the invisible work doesn't exist.

That's the difference between a service and a business.

What are the most common financial and accounting struggles you see with luxury residential firms?

The biggest one is that most designers are afraid to even look at their books. I know I was in the beginning. Some designers don't even have books. They're operating in complete fog.

Here's the thing: it's very easy to start a design business because we love what we do. Almost too easy. You have talent. You have clients. You're making money. But it's another thing entirely to treat it as a proper business. And most designers don't.

The illusion of profit is number one. A designer completes a three-hundred-thousand-dollar project and feels successful. But they never actually measure what they made. They see money in the account and assume it's profit. It's not. Part of it is client reimbursements. Part of it is product cost that still needs to be paid to vendors. Part of it is overhead. What's left is what they actually made.

Most designers don't separate these things. So they look at a big number and feel confident, then at tax time they're shocked by what they actually owe.

Second is that product margins aren't calculated correctly. Designers quote a price on furniture without accounting for all the actual costs. Procurement time. Designer time spent managing the order and changes. Shipping fees and potential damages. Installation coordination. Restocking fees if something doesn't work. That all costs money. If you're not building it into your margin, you're working for free.

Third is that business and personal finances are mixed. Reimbursements from clients come in but the designer doesn't know if that's profit or pass-through money. They spend personal money on business things or business money on personal things. At tax time, nothing is clean. The accountant doesn't know what's what. So either taxes are calculated wrong or it takes weeks to sort it out.

Fourth is that expense documentation is scattered. Invoices are in email and text messages and old project files. Receipts are in a drawer. Contractor payments are sometimes on cards, sometimes on checks. When an accountant or auditor asks for documentation, it's a nightmare.

But here's what I want to emphasize: detailed records aren't just important. They're essential. Let me say that again. You must keep detailed records. Period.

I just had a client come back to us after the Palisades fires needing all kinds of documentation for their insurance claim. Our detailed records allowed us to pull everything they needed in minutes. Not days. Not weeks. Minutes. That kind of detail doesn't just help you understand your business. It protects you when things go wrong in the real world (and there will always be something that goes wrong).

Tax season creates huge stress for designers. What causes it, and what can designers do throughout the year to prevent it?

The stress doesn't come from taxes themselves. It comes from having no clean records and no support system in place.

Most designers don't want to think about bookkeeping. Some think they don't even need a bookkeeper. Wrong on both counts. And most don't have project management software like Design Manager that allows them to track detailed records throughout the year.

If your expenses are scattered, if you're not tracking the cost of goods sold correctly, if you don't have clean records of what was business versus personal, then tax season is crisis mode. You're scrambling to reconstruct a year of financial activity. You're not sure if you're missing deductions. You're worried you're going to get something wrong.

Most of the stress is completely preventable.

Throughout the year, you need clean systems. One place where business expenses go. One place where invoices are organized by project. Clear separation between what you spent on product and what you spent on overhead. Documentation of every significant transaction. Categories that make sense for your business. And honestly, you need someone managing this. A bookkeeper who understands design business. Not just a random accounting person.

When you pay vendors, document what they did. When you receive reimbursements from clients, know whether it's product cost or profit. When you buy something for business, keep the receipt and categorize it immediately instead of putting it in a pile.

It sounds tedious, but it takes about an hour a week to maintain clean records. Compare that to weeks of stress and scrambling at tax time.

The other part is understanding your numbers before tax time comes. Most designers don't look at their financials until the accountant asks for them in December. By then it's too late to fix anything. If you're looking at your numbers monthly, you can see problems coming. You can adjust. You can plan.

And here's the truth: you need project management software that handles this. Something that keeps detailed records of everything. Your project budgets. Your procurement. Your client invoices and payments. All of it. That means when tax time comes or when you need to prove something happened, you have it. Immediately. Not scrambling.

Clean records throughout the year equal calm tax season. Every single time.

You mention that designers need better systems. What tools actually make a difference when it comes to financial clarity?

First you must understand and implement good systems. You can have the fanciest software and still have a mess if you don't know how to use it or what you're measuring.

That said, what most designers need is centralization. One place where project budgets live. One place where procurement is tracked. One place where client invoices, retainers, and deposits are organized. One place where you can see what you've spent and what you've made on each project.

Software like Design Manager can give you that. You're not trying to force your business into accounting software designed for other industries. It centralizes the numbers that actually matter: your project budgets, procurement costs, markup, profit margins, vendor costs, client payments.

The real power is seeing your numbers in real time, not after the fact. You know immediately whether a project is on budget. You know what your actual profit margins are. You know where money is sitting with clients as retainers or deposits that you haven't completed work for yet. You know if a vendor payment is due and overdue.

Most designers operate on a cash basis: money comes in, money goes out, hope you have enough left at the end. That's not a strategy. That's chaos with good intentions.

The right system gives you visibility. And visibility changes everything about how confidently you price, how you manage client relationships, and whether you actually understand your business.

When you have this kind of clarity, everything feels calmer. Pricing conversations stop being defensive. Client communication becomes easier because you're not secretly worried about the money. Tax season becomes administrative instead of catastrophic.

If you could give one piece of advice to luxury interior designers who feel overwhelmed by the business side, what would it be?

Stop treating the business side as something separate from design.

You wouldn't let a client dictate your aesthetic choices. You have taste. You have expertise. You have clear ideas about what works and what doesn't. Apply that same confidence to your business.

The business side isn't more complicated or less important than the creative side. It's just less familiar. You can learn it. You can structure it. You can make it beautiful and efficient, just like you do with a design.

And here's what happens when you do: the business stops being a problem. Pricing conversations become calm instead of anxious. Client communication feels easier because you have a clear process. Money doesn't feel mysterious because you can see where it's going. And you get your life back. You stop working weekends. You stop checking your phone on vacation. You stop feeling like you're failing at the business while crushing it creatively.

The designers I work with who experience that shift didn't suddenly become smarter. They just got clear. They named what was actually happening instead of hoping it would work out. They built structures that protected both their creativity and their sanity.

You can do that too. It just requires you to slow down, get clear on what you want your business to be, and then design it intentionally instead of letting it happen to you.

And if you want to go deeper into these ideas, I encourage you to check out my podcast, The McClain Method and my website of the same name: mcclainmethod.com . And if you're ready to build your visibility and marketing in a way that matches the quality of your work, brightlensstudio.com  is where that happens.

But first things first. Get your business foundation solid. Everything else is easier from there.