We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Caylee Stefanek. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Caylee below.

Caylee, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Logos Interiors is an interior design firm that serves high end clientelle with interior and exterior construction plans and full service furnishings. After working for many talented designers, architects, and builders, we have earned a thorough understanding of this industry, and developed a vision for our place in it.

In a place like Mountain Brook where talent and resources are abundant, we focus on our company culture and the ability to be a good steward. We have found that high quality designers attract high quality builders, and most importantly, lead to high quality clients who share our core values.

Day one at this company, I pulled from my business education at Belmont University to establish core values, and a mission to “serve well.” I view myself as more than a mom, designer, business owner, but as an organization. As a highly creative, internally driven person, I have spent decades in the music industry and design industry, and I enjoy mentoring other creatives and business owners who struggle to establish their vision, by encouraging use of core values, and most importantly, embracing and reframing failures. Nothing forces you to learn faster, than a failure. The book of James describes this perfectly, “consider it pure joy, when you encounter various trials.” He goes on to explain, that by trials we produce endurance and character.

Our top three core values “Creativity,” “Trust,” and “Stewardship” create margin and justify things like “rest”, which produces creativity. Trust produces a relationship with more momentum, to create margin for creativity. Stewardship promotes trust. When I meet with a client, I listen. I listen for words like, “we want our design to be unique or authentic.” This tells me they value creativity. I listen for stories about previous designers or builders, to identify if they are able to trust a designer with their home. Lastly, I hone in on their budget, their expectations of design, and their return on investment, to assess what their standard for stewardship is. Our ideal design client will not place stewardship over creativity, or vice versa, they will trust us to balance their intentions and produce a design that meets everyone’s standards. The client relationship is built on this foundation.

This makes hiring easy. We look and listen to a candidate’s creativity, their skill sets to serve well, and their understanding of how design impacts an investment and in turn should generate more for a client, and how important transparency and self accountability is. With high freedom, comes high responsbility. With creativity, freedom is a must.

In this industry, we see people worked to the bone, void of creativity, sacrificing time with their family in the name of “creating a family’s sacred space.” To us, authenticity is of the utmost importance, and that includes the ability to make and manage our own homes to the highest level. At no point, can this job intrude on my children’s livelihoods and ability to be kids. This is precisiely why we started Logos Interiors, to find a balance that exchanges our high responsibility for high freedom. We see this business as a holistic extension of our God given gifts, and we take serving others well, seriously. We have found that by listening for values, and articulating our own, we are able to shepherd this fast paced business into the right homes, that serve all parties well.

I’d be remiss to leave out our mission to ‘serve well.” Focusing on this mission allows us to keep our hands open and our eye on our own work. Much of this industry struggles with comparison, and social media platforms make this more enticing and ensaring. I credit my “creative freedom” from my faith and largely to my coming of age, in Nashville. There’s nothing more humbling than writing a genuine song about your personal experiences, in the intimacy of your own bedroom, with your own life mistakes, and singing it vulnerably to a bar of strangers in Nashville… Only to have the girl or guy after you get up and play a similar variation of the same song. Every night in Nashville, I left gigs with the mantra “just do better,” “just get more creativite.” “There is no universal shortage.”

When you open yourself up to the possibility that others serve better in their own capacity and creativity, it gives you a freedom and excitement to pursue your own capacity and creativity. That means, “not every client is for me.” If my mission is to “serve well.” then it is a corporate win win, for a potential client to be served better by another designer for whatever that reason may be. As long as they are served well, my company’s mission is complete. For me to take a job that we cannot “serve well” on, would be a miss for this business. For some potential clients, that means they cannot afford our service, and are better served by a lower rate with another firm. For some potential clients, that means they may want to bring in a larger team than I am willing to maintain. This focus, allows us to priortize the betterment of others, and simulatenously protect our culture from the tension of a project with friction, due to a simple misalignment. It makes it all the more sweeter, when “that” client is the one for us.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

After graduating at Belmont University, I left the songwriting industry and to work for a stunningly talented, formally trained interior designer. Upon moving to Birmingham in 2018 I worked for a builder and designed their residential construction plans and furnishings. My next job was with a formally trained, licensed architect, and I was contracted to draw interior elevations. In 2021 I opened Logos Interiors. We provide full service interior design for high end clients who value creativity, stewardship, and trust.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

When I had my first son and was fortunate to unlearn that my professional success was tied to my hours worked. The firm culture I was in at that time prided itself on essentially unlimited access, and the reward for working the hardest was more and harder work. As I grew in my creativity, I began to value rest, and how that regenerates authenticity in my soul, in a way that I believe God designed us to require as human beings. I began to see whole homes in 3D again, in my head, and fell in love with design, again. I have never had to sacrifice time with my husband or children. I went part time in 2021, and have never been more creative or productive, than I am now with a shorter work day, and the quality of potential highers has been elevated to a whole new level.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Give what they need to be successful…. Days off, clear expectations, access to you when needed and your full attention. Know your values, and understand theirs to prevent misalignment or friction. Keep it professional. Someone who “dogs” other designers, businesses or friends, will dog you. Our small team is positive, professional, and confidential when needed. Don’t rush them, take ownership if you are behind on something and do it yourself if you’ve waited until the last minute. No one wants a 6am text, “please get this printed by 8am, or else!” The architect who once hired me was passionate about the concept of “Full Ownership.” Anything that goes wrong is “on me.” Did they order something wrong? I didn’t give clear enough instructions or follow up, well. Did they label a client’s name wrong? I didn’t onboard the client thoroughly. Did they design in a way that doesn’t represent this brand? I haven’t articulated the brand with visual aids, correct language, or provoke that sensibility, well. Thank them often.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.logosinteriors.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/logosinteriors/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caylee-stefanek-2215b959

Image Credits

Reeded Vanity – Jean Allsop
Blue Kitchen – Alisha Crossley
Living Room – Jean Allsopp