SAID - Something About Interior Designers

Join Jane Dagmi and her colleagues from Furniture Today (Thomas Russell and Powell Slaughter), Home Accents Today (Thomas Lester) and Casual Living (Adelaide Elliott) as they discuss what they saw and heard at the fall 2020 extended High Point Market. Visit each publication's website for a deeper dive.

Brad Clinard is a certified financial planner at High Point Financial Design, his family’s practice that caters to interior designers seeking financial abundance. Skilled in empathetic listening and fueled by authentic connection, Clinard believes personal finance is more personal than finance and that the most gratifying saving and spending is derived from our values. The podcast touches on topics such as the challenges business owners face, emergency funds, grief, family financial discussions and much more. Additionally, listeners can download three handouts and ABA – Ask Brad Anything –by going to his site, www.hpfinancialdesign.com/designerstoday.

In August, after 25 years of working at one of Philadelphia’s well-respected interiors firms, Nina Pritzker Cohen launched her own firm, Nina Pritzker Designs. Looking back and ahead, Pritzker paints a frank picture of the opportunities and challenges that came with working for an established mid-size company and also discusses how it’s been, so far, to start a business in a pandemic.

Spokane, WA-based Erin Haskell Gourde, the big cheese at Design for the PPL, is a fresh face in design. In business for 3 years, with a staff of 5, her journey to being an entrepreneur is dotted with design-related posts such as working at Herman Miller – as well as other gigs, like bartending, which seems to be oddly relevant to interior design. On the near eve of opening up a new studio and showroom, Haskell Gourde shares her background, strengths and weaknesses, current project roster, and more.

Sheryl McLean, interior designer, author and speaker, is candid about her journey, and notes that her path to interior design was laced with discovery, dedication and racism. Tracing her journey in this conversation, she is refreshingly open about her earlier careers as well as the oppressive treatment she encountered along the way. Tapping into her psychology degree, McLean is fascinated by human behavior, and speaks with joy about her passion for helping successful women understand that they deserve to live beautifully and should not feel guilty about it.

Featuring the bold and the beautiful, inside and out, interior designers Aimee Wertepny (PROjECT), Bailey (Bailey Li Interiors) and Clodagh (Clodagh Design) share their unique design perspectives, processes, and ways in which they affect change in their client’s lives and in the world. This podcast was excerpted from a recent Las Vegas Market webinar. The podcast ends at 59 minutes into the webinar. To see the last 15 minutes, go here and pick up at :59. https://youtu.be/wauNuUR1QVE

Photographer Ellen McDermott of Ellen McDermott Interior Photography creates beautiful imagery for interior designers, fashion and design houses, and other commercial clients. She honed her craft shooting for a San Francisco auction house – her goal there was to make the viewer want to reach out and touch the object – before landing in New York six years later. The connections she made through her work in San Francisco eventually led her to Martha Stewart where she worked with her on the “Homekeeping Handbook.” McDermott’s work has been featured in Connecticut Cottages & Gardens, The Magazine Antiques, House Beautiful, Wall Street Journal, Country Living and more and she has photographed the work of countless interior designers. She loves the collaboration and opportunity to capture their work and express the mood of a room. In the podcast we discuss the evolution of her career, her favorite tools, the joy of collaboration and the value of mentorship. Throughout you can pick up on her New England accent and a genuine thread of gratitude. Learn more about her at her website,  https://ellenmcdermott.com/.

When she realized she would not be an architect, Seattleite LeeAnn Baker beelined for the New York School of interior Design and got her interior design degree. She loved the city and made it home for a number of years, first studying and working for other creatives, and then as a founder of a trade publication for decorators. The events of 9/11 began a period of soul searching and Baker eventually surrendered to her love of design. Her first job – picking paint colors for a friend – wasn’t enough. She needed work and asked to paint the house, too. Looking back, Baker says she can trace all of her projects back to that job. In this podcast episode, Baker recounts her journey, discusses her aesthetic, her desire to overcome her fear of public speaking and how she is balancing parenting and work during COVID-19.

Los Angeles-based interior designer Laura Muller is open about sleeping with her contractor. He is, after all, her husband, Cliff. Together the two are co-principals at Four Point Design Build, a practice they opened 10 years ago. In conversation, Muller’s passion for honoring her clients is evident as is her ardent belief in the power of brand collaborations and the importance of designing for happiness. During our conversation, we learn how  growing up in the theater has served Muller well, how, as a single mother of three kids with special needs, she created a home that functioned for all, and how morning rituals and daily reconciliation creates joy and peace.  Find out more about this talented and resilient woman at her website, www.fourpointdesignbuild.com.

In his keynote speech live from the Designer Experience, interior designer and soon-to-be author, Corey Damen Jenkins, shared his method and tips for safe proofing self-esteem during especially trying times. Outlining specific ways to maintain both financial and energy reserves, stave off the urge to make debilitating comparisons, and steer clear of social viruses, Jenkins reassures us, by way of the immortal words of John Lennon, “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”