We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Holly Thompson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Holly, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Learning how to be an interior designer was a pretty fun process. I thoroughly enjoyed my interior design education and practiced for years on houses that I owned and renovated before venturing out on others’ homes. It turned out that learning on myself was the most valuable experience I could have gotten, because I was forced to live with my choices. I learned lessons that a designer would only learn if they lived through the process, like what kind of kitchen layout works best and what kinds of rugs off-gas forever. Venturing out into the world of professional interior design was a whole new education in itself. This part involves client psychology and managing expectations, plus dealing with rising prices and supply-chain issues. The skills that are most useful in this are the same ones that help when living through a renovation: learning to let things roll off you and not getting riled up. Plus, a lot of strategy to make sure the way we’re doing things is still the most efficient, given the changing economic climate.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?

I own an interior design studio on Main Street in historic downtown Franklin in the luxury kitchen and bath niche. I do all things interiors as well (including whole-house design, decorating, and furniture), and hold a Master’s Degree in Interior Design from Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).

I love to use interior design to create a unique experience for my clients in their homes. I did my Master’s thesis on McMansions, identifying where they go wrong in order to implement design solutions in the planning process. Creating a better interior experience in people’s homes, no matter where they live, is so important in creating an enjoyable life.

I love design theory and understanding the “why” of interior design. This helps me to design in any style, because the theory of good design is consistent no matter what style a client likes. I love the challenge of creating designs in different styles, which means my own home changes often.

I recently renovated a home in the Tennessee countryside that will appear in American Farmhouse Style magazine in the summer of 2023. I am also a frequent contributor to the magazine, weighing in on design trends and creating how-to content for DIYers.

I also have a busy home life, with a husband who is a contractor and luxury real estate agent, three kids, three cats, and a guinea pig named Scooter.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I think the ability to pivot and be flexible is one of the most important factors in small business success. Ultimately, you have to come up with a plan and try it out, and be able to change it if it doesn’t work.

We learned this early on. Since my husband and I are both in the design/construction business, we have a lot of skills that make renovations seem simple and DIY-friendly. At the beginning, we imagined that clients were like us and could easily save money by managing their own project. We thought that saving the client money was the most important thing to them. So, we offered inexpensive design packages that gave them a conceptual design and instructions for doing it themselves. It turned out that they had tons of questions and needed us to help them implement it. Since we didn’t anticipate all these extra hours, we ended up working countless extra hours for free. We had to shift our business model to be full-service and learn to charge accordingly, which would then affect how many projects we could take on, how many employees to have, and more.

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

Oh, definitely. The thing about the renovation business is that it comes and goes. If things go great one year, you have to be careful about making financial decisions based on that, because the next year could be drastically different. Our first year in business was bumpy but we ended up doing great. Since it was only our first year, we thought doing great would last forever, and we moved to a much bigger (and more expensive) location. The next year was the worst ever. Fewer people were doing projects for some reason, and the ones who were were doing small ones. It wasn’t even close to enough to cover even our business expenses. Since we were completely on our own, without investors or financial help, it was terrifying. Ultimately, business picked up again and we were able to eventually recover. This difficult time helped us to expand our services to be more recession-proof in case it happens again.

Contact Info:

• Website: hollythompsonhomes.com
• Instagram: hollythompsonhomes
• Facebook: hollythompsonhomes

Image Credits
Allison Elefante Photography, Leslie Brown Photography, Ashel Parsons and Angela Talley Photography