From Corporate Employees to Successful Interior Design Business Owners

Show Notes

My Little Empire

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:11] So
today we’re going to be speaking with Lauren and Mika from my little empire.
They’re husband and wife team and they’re joining us ALL THE WAY FROM
AUSTRALIA. THE LAND DOWN UNDER.

[00:00:25] All
right so jumping right into it. The guys want to just say hello. Y ou are from
Australia.What’s it like doing business over there in Australia.

[00:00:43] It’s
pretty good to be honest. Yeah. We’re really lucky we where we live is a great
little suburb. It’s not too far from Melbourne’s City. We’ve got the beach not
far from us and yet we’re lucky enough to work from home which is amazing. We
also see travel sort of all over the state and interstate to say clients. So
yeah I can’t complain it’s pretty good over here.

[00:01:16] Nice
and can you give us a little glimpse and so Lauren your the interior designer.
Mika you do the horticulture work.

[00:01:27] The
horticulture is a past job so I was doing horticulture for 12 years and I’ve
been involved in My little Empire for the last 2 so it’s grown and I’m focusing
on the interior design now.

[00:01:43] Now
it’s making sense. That’s interesting but you still kind of mix your background
into into your Interior Design Projects

[00:01:55] Yes.
so I do alot of specifying for the indoor plants and plants outside so if
needed but we just sort of go towards the indoor plants because it’s specific
to the interiors.

[00:02:11] What
did you do before you launch my little empire. Before I launched My little
empire I actually worked in the pharmaceutical industry for about ten years. So
my role was I had a pharmacy that I would oversee all across the country and I
used to travel work and I wouldn’t be home very often and it was definitely a
fast paced sort of corporate environment and something that I wasn’t very
passionate about. So I just yet decided that I want to change and interiors has
always been something that interested me so I decided to throw away that career
and study and study interior design and now here I am still working.

[00:03:10] when
did you start your business back in 2010.

[00:03:14] Yeah
yeah. And so and initially and can you tell us how you started your business.

[00:03:23] Yes
so I started my little empire as an actual retail store so homewares retail
store and I opened that up obviously so that I could get exposure to different
brands and different artists and just base sort of emerged in all things
interiors. And I at the same time I started studying interior design and yes
focusing on that side of things from out of the shop. And it just grew
organically and eventually over time we decided to close the shop to just focus
on the interior design side of things and not have to worry that running a
retail store as well and its been fantastic. It been Probably the best decision
I’ve ever made in terms of you know with my career

[00:04:23] That
sounds like quite a brave path you see started with like one of the hardest
things to do which is have like a brick and mortar shop. And yet. And you guys
kind of found out through that that you got plenty of clients and you wanted to
be able to be a little bit more flexible so you kind of got away from the you
know in shop process and now you can work from anywhere.

[00:04:48] Yes
exactly in that sort of I guess was always the plan. And it’s kind of surreal
that now we’re doing it. But yeah it was a daunting sort of decision to make
because it was you know in so it always fear of the unknown. I think we kind of
backed ourselves and we had some amazing clients at the time that really
inspired us to sort of take that leap of faith and we did. And it’s been
amazing. It’s been fantastic couldn’t really ask much more to be honest.

[00:05:22] So
did you take your shop online now do you still sell home ware products.

[00:05:28] Yeah
look. What do you say. So the online store component is definitely still there
anyway. Basically with just sort of outsourced that part of it so that we can
focus on the interior. We’ve got come to people that look after that for us.
And it’s it’s not really a primary focus of our business it’s sort of more just
like an add on I suppose now for us whereas years ago It was the other way
around that. The retail side of things is our primary focus in the interiors
was secondary whereas now it’s very much you know the other way round. So yeah
we we offer some of their services online like e-design but yeah most of our
work is sort of done face to face with our client.

[00:06:19] So
what type of projects you guys work on mainly

[00:06:25] Basically
we try to be sort of like an end to end service so we predominantly help
clients if they’re renovating or building and we’ll help them select all of
their you know fixtures and fittings and a lot of the time Mika project manage
renovation for our clients and over sea all the trades and then secondary to
that is interior styling say we’ll source furniture and artwork and things like
that four clients and then we’ll style the Homes for them. You know I would do
everything right down to the sheets on the bed that they sleep in. So we try to
really offer a complete end to end service for our clients just to make it easy
for them.

[00:07:14] sounds
like a focus on residential mainly.

[00:07:16] Correct.
Yes. we’re slowly branching out to commercial. Last year we did a university

[00:07:30] It’s
still predominantly the residential side of things as opposed to the commercial
projects. I think it’s sort of what we love. But having said that you know if a
really good commercial project sort of popped up you know we definitely have
the interest in having a look at that and seeing you know what we could do.

[00:07:51] Yeah.
And I think it’s interesting because I know you guys are talking more like how
many clients you have and how challenging that was at a certain time and we’re
going to get to that question in a minute. What do you think is the hardest
part of your business but as far as expanding to if it’s a big client comes
what would be your strategy to kind of wrap up what you’re doing with your
residential for instance and open ourselves up to a bigger project. Is it just
a matter of scheduling.

[00:08:23] Yeah
I think so. I mean at the moment probably for the last 18 months with Been at
capacity that there hasn’t been a time for the last 18 months where we sort of
had any sort of gaps to be able to take on any large scale projects like a
commercial one. And so it would be something that we definitely have to sort of
plan for. In that sense but having said that we are sort of building a quality
team at the moment. So we’ve got some some great people that we do work with that
you know sort of on a project by project basis as needed. And so we don have
infrastructure there. If that if it was needed to be able to bring other people
on to assist us in completing projects or maybe even taking on a couple of big
ones

[00:09:17] I
think that was one of the struggles we had as well like it was. Yes. Just being
able to outsource some of the items quickly to meet the demand and timeline and
that I think that is one of the biggest struggles I found when working on big
commercial projects on my own

[00:09:41] It’s just it’s
almost a different ballgame altogether like residential versus commercial
commercial obviously on a much much bigger scale and to have a team of people
that you really count on and that you need sort of trust to sort of deliver the
best that they possibly can. It’s really crucial and I think that’s something
we don’t take lightly or I think look at going down that path until we felt
really confident that we’re the right people on board so that we could deliver the
absolute best to our clients that something you know we wouldn’t want to
compromise the quality of our work. Just to say we’ve taking on a project we
want to be able to deliver to the best of our ability.

[00:10:27] Yeah
it sounds like you guys do really I mean your website and your portfolio looks
beautiful in the fact that you guys get some many clients repeating client
sounds like that’s a big part of why your business is succeeding.

[00:10:45] Yeah
I guess when I started the business I never really thought about repeat clients
because you kind of think you work on one project for client and then you know
you sort of design their forever home. And that’s the way but I guess we’ve
been lucky enough that a lot of our clients they will own investment properties
or that want to work on say you know they might be developers and things like
that so they’ll sort of come back to us again to work on their next project and
then they might be you know go complete that one and then a year later they’ll
get back and touch to us and say hey I have this little investment probably
that I want to renovate. We want to get you guys on board. So we’re pretty
lucky that we get that referral and repeat business and its kind of nice
because you get to know your client sort of long term and they become sort of
like friends not just clients I suppose which is something that we really love.
Love getting to know our clients.

[00:11:57] Yeah.
Yeah that’s one thing I love about I also with developers as well and I find
that if they like working with you they’ll keep coming back to you know year
after year.

[00:12:17] It’s
you guys have a strategy you use for developers versus residential clients far
as making your relationships.

[00:12:27] I
wouldn’t really say no I really say there is a strategy into developing a
relationship. I just think you know sort of sort of ethos is just being genuine
authentic. And I think that that’s something that you know occasionally we have
clients who say to us I was surprised. You guys are really down to earth and
easy to talk to and we’re like yeah of course we are we are just normal people
but I sometimes people they have this preconceived idea that you know working
with an interior design remains that they’re gonna be pretentious or critical
of their Home or things like that and we just not about that work out you know
making sure that we get to know our clients that there is a developer or
private client we get to know them really well so that we understand what their
neends are. And I wouldn’t say we have a strategy I guess strategy is just to
be ourselves.

[00:13:30] And
listen to what people are wanting because I think people will tell you what I
want. So it’s kind of just unraveling that to really kind of Arcangel what I’m
really hearing is that you’re looking for x y in there and keeping the
communication really

[00:13:55] That
makes it makes a lot of sense. You know just be yourself. Work hard Quality
stuff

[00:14:19] Our
next question is how do you manage responsibilities in the business. Who is
responsible for what

[00:14:30] Well
it is going to get Mika to answer this one.

[00:14:47] So
I’m responsible for all the back end of the business so all the logistics all
the furniture coming to our warehouse. Overseaing the trade design concept a
lot of behind the scenes most of the time Lauren is differently the face

[00:15:07] As
much as I would love for Mika to be the face of this business he’s diffently
the shy one. In case you couldn’t tell. So I’ll handle more the front of House
and the client side of things and he’ll do a lot of behind the scenes. Yeah.
Being married it does make it difficult sometimes to figure out who is
responsible for what. Well I’m sure you guys probably can understand that

[00:15:37] Yeah
you just going to wear multiple hats really.

[00:15:43] I
think look got a good system now.

[00:15:47] What
was the biggest challenge for you guys like starting off working at the couple

[00:15:58] I
would say it probably was just like separating work from personal life. Having
times where we don’t talk about work it’s just more of its our time so to
speak.

[00:16:14] That’s
a good point.

[00:16:15] Yeah
definitely. We’re still we’re still learning that a bit I think

[00:16:22] Running
your own business You’re always working. Yes definitely find time to switch
off. Yeah.

[00:16:32] So
true. Like there’s times where Brian wants to talk about work and I’m just like
done with it.

[00:16:40] Yeah
I’m up with a code word for the other person

[00:16:53] Yeah
we might have to do that, We made a promise that every morning we go repeat
walk with the dog and we sort of said right when we go in the morning that’s
just our time that’ the one time the whole day we’re not going to talk about
work we kind of find every morning our walks becomes sort of like a meeting
about what we’re going to do for the day workwise. So we might have to try your
code word

[00:17:39] Because
let me get too far and then she just explodes on me.

[00:17:56] OK
so what was the worst entrepeneur moment in your interior design business. I
think just Yeah like not taking the time to properly plan and set out our goals
from the start. I think we kind of didn’t expect to be as busy as what we were
when we first started. So I think we kind of thought Oh yeah that come down the
track will be able to sit down and you know get together strategy and time just
obviously get to away from you And I think that was probably a mistake because
there was definitely opportunities there that we missed and we could have we
could have taken advantage of that because we didn’t really know. We just
focusing so much on trying to get the day to day stuff done. We weren’t looking
at the bigger picture. So I think yeah like if we could sort of give advice to
anyone else sort of starting out it’s sit down and put that plan together at
the beginning because it’s a lot harder to go back once you’re already really
into it. Yeah. So I think planning planning is definitely something that we
should have done more of at the beginning.

[00:19:18] So
how far do you guys generally plan ahead. I mean there’s always going to be
things like flying in or out of nowhere b.

[00:19:28] Yeah.
Well we have a monthly sort forecast. Just because of work load it’s really
difficult. That would be we minimum amount of Time we can probably plan for.
And then you know long term of definitely set some long term goals that we’re
working towards. And yeah. So it’s a bit of bias really

[00:20:01] And
do those long term plans have anything to do with becoming more flexible as far
as working more online or do you want to continue the residential. I’m sorry
the local branch.

[00:20:17] I
think for us like will always want us to do what we’re doing. But we definitely
had sort of seeing the shift with e-design we are doing a lot more e-design at
the moment and it sort of seems to be growing and for us that’s fine because it
means we can basically work anywhere. You know one of our long term goals is
you know Mika and I we both grew up in Sydney and we’d like to kind of move
back eventually one day like not maybe not within the next five years that
might be after that and I think come having some clients that are based up
there it’s been great for us and having work that sort of coming from
interstate means that we can kind of cater to clients so from anywhere. So we
did leave Melbourne eventually one day not anytime soon. Yeah business would be
flexible enough to work and operate from anywhere in the world really.

[00:21:29] Yes
you could take your clients with you.

[00:21:32] Yep
which Would be amazing.

[00:21:35] So
right now for your e-design client how do you guys go about finding those like
connecting with those clients. Is it through social media or referrals again.

[00:21:49] Most
of them referrals. To be honest like you know actually all of the ones we’ve
had have been referrals so we might have a client here in Melbourne that you
know we’ve completed styling their home and then you know They’ll send photos
to their friends or whatever and some friends might get in touch with us and
say you know we love what you do. We want you to do the same for us. Mika
actually manages a lot of the e-design client on line. It’s just really good at
being able to juggle you know that sort of thing. So yeah it’s al done online like
either on the phone by email or skype and some clients want us to actually you
know put everything together for them and then fly up to them install their
Home’s. Other clients ask for guidance on not and we can do either for them say
it works really well and I think that’s the beauty of technology these days.

[00:22:59] Yeah
and speaking of technology could you tell us a little bit about the software
you use.

[00:23:04] Yeah
so we use a program called Sketchtup that’s basically the base of all of our
e-design work, moodboards. So Sketchup is definetly the program to use

[00:23:27] We
are actually doing like an advanced course at the moment in Sketchup to sort of
you know keep our skills up to date you know programs change and evolve all the
time so we like to make sure that we keeping our skill set up to date as best
as we can as well. So yes a great tool that people looking to design and
visualize some house spaces.

[00:23:53] And
Mika you’ve also mentioned that it was you that was doing a lot of hand
drawing?

[00:24:03] Yeah
that’s the both of us I do a rough sketch and then convert it all over. Once
you get them the ticket of approval yes.

[00:24:13] Do
you guys use any drafting programs as well.

[00:24:18] No
I not. We die like we’ve got. What an amazing architect that we work with that
does alot of that stuff for us. Yeah. So we don’t need any drafting programs

[00:24:36] SketchUp
and handdrawing. The more creative fun part of the design process. That’s good.

[00:24:44] Yeah.
Yeah and I think something like handdrawings is something that’s definitely
like a bit of a dying art because everything is so digital these days. So I
think clients really appreciate when he takes the time to do something that is
hand drawn and they can see you know your design come to life and it’s
something that’s really unique that nobody else can replicate as well. So it is
something that we want to keep and incorporate right into what we offer our
clients. But having said that we also understand that there’s that need for the
digital design too. So it’s kind of nice to have a mix of both.

[00:25:26] Do
you plan on bringing anything any other softwares into your world in the
future. Sounds like you guys are constantly learning which is why ask.

[00:25:35] Yeah
like it’s always happy to sort of try different programs and things like that.
Like I know Revit is a huge program here. We’ve sort of dabbled in different
programs and it’ll be something that will always continue to do. Just because
there’s so many advanced in technology all the time you kind of have to
otherwise you get left behind I suppose

[00:26:10] So
the next question we’re curious what’s what’s a typical week look like for the
two guys like you guys work Monday to Friday do you work weekends. How do you
guys go about setting your hours.

[00:26:33] no
two weeks are really the same. So we try to schedule our initial Consults and
new clients in Monday. So then we can be sort of flexible for our other
clients.

[00:26:53] Yeah
definitely we try to schedule all of our meeting on the same day so that were
out one day. Then we try to have like solid sort of admin days to get work done
and some behind the scenes designs you know replying to emails whatever it may
be.

[00:27:14] Wow
so you really block it out

[00:27:18] we
try to yeah to because What we found was with literally their someweeks were we
are just running around all the time either collecting samples or meeting with
supplier or seeing clients or you know meeting new clients and then we sort of
get home and it will be 7 or 8pm . And our inboxe is full and you know we had
designs to sketchup. We had all sorts of things. Now we’ve we really try to
sort of like look in the diary and go like okay this day is going to be our
admin days the week and then our other days are going to be our days out on the
road. Getting all the things done that we need to get on

[00:28:08] Maybe
occasionally a vacation hopefully.

[00:28:13] Yeah
do you guys give yourself vacations every year. How do you go about it.

[00:28:20] We’re
having a Vacation we got one planned to New Zealand in June for ten days so
that’ll be our vacation for the year.

[00:28:31] Yeah.
We got married a few years ago and literally worked up until the day before our
wedding and then for our honeymoon we went away just locally. So like 4 5
nights and worked while we were away. Yeah. This trip is going to be like our
first real life honeymoon.

[00:29:03] Don’t
take the computers.

[00:29:05] The
computer comes everywhere.

[00:29:20] Do
you go away much

[00:29:20] We
kind of constantly on the move honestly like we spent the past couple years on
and off in Thailand working from there. Oh wow. Now back in Canada but we’re
originally from California. We’ve been kind of moving around a lot and now just
kind of finally settling down. Yes. We’re and we’re pregnant so we need to
settle down. Yeah.

[00:29:59] Whether
you want to or not oh that’s amazing.

[00:30:08] It’s
great what the e- design business has really allowed us to to do that. It’s
just super grateful for the Internet allowing us to be who we want to be which
is kind of travelers and nomadic people. And my family is one side of the
country and hers is on the other side. So knowing that we need to be able to be
as flexible as possible.

[00:30:30] Yeah.
And that’s right. I think the e-design is just you know it’s something that
we’re definitely getting more and more clients contacting us for that service
and it is just it opens up a whole new world because you really can be anywhere
and still sort of earning an income and running the business that you know you
can pass up one day and fly the outside world. And nobody really ever know
unless you told them I guess.

[00:31:04] Exactly

[00:31:05] Yeah
yeah. Very cool.

[00:31:09] Yeah.
I’d love to keep talking to you guys all night but we’ve we’ve kept you first
way too long. It’s like it’s like 11 30 over there. You’re in your side of the
world. So one more question before you go. What advice would you have for the
designers listening to this show that are wondering do what you guys do.

[00:31:35] Always
look at how you can improve So I think come yet look at what you can do better
I don’t ever feel like be your own best critic. Like in a nice way but you
know. Yeah. Back itself but at the same time look at what you could be doing
that after each project that you can look back on it and say I did this really
well. But I could have done this better. Or you know is there better why I
could be doing it. And I think that why you sort of develop and grow and be the
best that you possibly can be.

[00:32:24] Mika
anything?

[00:32:28] back
yourself definitely go for it. Yeah don’t be afraid. You never know unless you
have confidence in yourself.