Appearing on a TV remodeling show may be the quickest path to notoriety in the interior design space today, but Bria Hammel is more interested in building an enduring business. She’s leveraged social media to cultivate a following of more than 200,000, which helped to build St. Paul, Minn.-based Bria Hammel Interiors into a national design firm. In 2018, she parlayed her expertise into a retail business, Brooke & Lou, specializing in “life friendly furniture.” And that success has led to licensing deals with other brands.

“I am a risk taker, but I’m a cautious risk taker,” Hammel says. She talks about running two distinct but overlapping businesses and how EOS (the Entrepreneurial Operating System) helps in running an efficient team. She talks about the online design service that was born out of Covid, and learnings from her first brick and mortar retail pop-up. Plus, design advice including the trick to successfully styling a bookcase and why she’s glad to see the Midcentury modern trend fade in popularity.

After our conversation with Hammel, we go back to the classroom with marketing professor Mike Porter at the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business. He talks about the challenge of scaling a service business, and what Hammel is doing well. “She emulates best practices in saying, what do I do, and what can I hire someone else to do.”