Managing My Design Firm Like an SEC Football Coach

We are wonderfully busy right now in the studio, and I don’t know if it is a sign of a strong economy or the harvest of fifteen years of the slow grind of building a company. I made the mistake of thinking it was the latter in 2020 as we fielded dozens of new client inquiries a month. Thinking I had finally made it, whatever “made it” was, I grew my staff. I moved my office from my home into a commercial building in Belle Meade. And I sat and waited to become the established, successful designer I had always dreamed of becoming. This was what I always wanted, I thought, until I found myself crying quietly inside one of our private offices and texting Jessica, one of my most beloved humans to ever work with me, asking her to please turn up the office radio so that no one could hear me cry.