We were lucky to catch up with Sadie Harper recently and have shared our conversation below.

Sadie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

As an entrepreneur, I think it takes a few things to be successful. One is opportunity recognition, meaning the skillful application of intuition + research to know if your idea is a good one. Beyond that, will it connect with clients, and is there enough of a client base who wants it? Without this, businesses fail. You can have (what you believe is) the best idea, or be impassioned and believe in your concept, then work really hard to convince people to sign on…but if the opportunity is misaligned with or doesn’t have a client base to accept (and pay!) for it, then it won’t get past launch-phase.

Secondarily, I believe it’s crucial to have enough service lines, backup revenue streams, and varying investment levels to pivot. If you only have your top services, then that market dries up because the economy changed, your business will also dry up. Back to opportunity recognition – you need to be scanning your industry landscape constantly to be aware of what’s going on, both on the vendor/supplier level and also the consumer level, and also the corporate version versus the entrepreneurial version, because these are not the same. If you aren’t skilled or prepared to develop new service lines to expand your consumer base, broaden your reach, and attract different investment levels, then business will stall.

Be known as an expert for certain key things, but always be increasing your expertise and ability to offer higher levels of quality over time. Be constantly refining the final deliverables, but also be able to segment off services into sub-categories as their own stand-alone offerings.

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?

I was a high-end visual merchandiser in boutiques during early career days, then went the corporate route for a time…until I came back to merchandising in high-end boutiques for women’s fashion. Because that industry had mostly dried up the way it was, I found a way to apply that expertise to interior design. I needed a business I could do on my schedule, with autonomy to decide what I wanted to become an expert in, creating professional opportunities for myself that corporate America wouldn’t. After running my business for several years, and transitioning it through several business models, I went to grad school for a Master of Science in Merchandising for Interior Design. With this, I re-launched, re-branded, and set out with a clearer understanding of how to make a creative business more structured.

Even though I didn’t set out to do bathrooms, I quickly became an expert in them – I know the flow, the progress, what elements it takes, and how to streamline both the process and the investment level. The end result is a modern-yet-timeless feel, with a polished aesthetic. Most people think designers over-style spaces; I take a scaled-back approach to let the space breathe. I know where and what elements to spend more on, and how to balance that with lower-cost items to effectively optimize the client’s investment level and give them a space that looks more expensive than it was.

Clients come to me when they’re overwhelmed with options, know they aren’t good at putting elements together to create one cohesive look, and value having a professional take over. They’re busy, high-achieving, and usually moms who want to move past the messy kid-phase with a more adult space that reflects who they have evolved to become.

I think I’m most proud of walking clients through the process. Looking at the before-to-after photos makes it look easy, quick, and seamless. It doesn’t show that renovation is messy and can feel disorganized and stressful. My job is to handle the details that overwhelm clients, the things that take away their focus on their families, careers, and lives. Delivering the finished room, and the photoshoot, are kind of ancillary; the primary job is to source quality materials and furnishings, track orders, handle any replacements with vendors, and control cost – to keep contractors from charging the client more when they installed something wrong. I’ve had to address incorrect installations with builders and installers, and I will hold to them fixing it, without charging either me or the client.

Clients also like that I can be clear about details, what’s needed at what point, and how things will be handled. I’m quick to respond, and they get me; not an AI bot, not another person, but the owner of the company. And that’s something I’ve kept as a priority, scaling appropriately, only taking as many jobs as will allow me to keep personal connections with each one.

I’m also proud of how I’ve evolved through this to offer higher levels of quality at each step. Even during conceptual phase, the design plans are more polished and give a better visual of the end result, which enables the client to make better decisions. Everything rests on the client making the decisions, and I lay out the facts and elements to facilitate that, answering questions about why things are done a certain way, or outlining how design provides solutions. The design informs the build, not the other way around, and we build to the design. But design comes first.

Another aspect the designer takes on is adjusting the design during the build phase – things always shift because installations require things to go in a certain way. I answer those questions to keep the same end result, without compromising the design. Once tile goes in, it’s done, and redoing it is costly and messy. Being confident on how it gets laid before anything is adhered means fewer mistakes and not losing time for redoing something. But I have to tell them what I want before they start, and I’ve gotten good at knowing how the end installation needs to look, even those small, finishing details because those are the ones that matter most, to make it look polished and intentional.

I take seriously the privilege of working on someone’s home because I’m leaving something permanent there. I want the new space to reflect what they need and want, but also elevate it to be the best it can be. Having lived in numerous places over the years, I know how to maximize a space’s potential without making it feel overstuffed with things.

Have you ever had to pivot?

For a brief time, I had to put this business in a dormant phase. Life took over. It was at this point that I went to grad school, with the intent of reopening it at the end (that’s what the entire degree program was about!). When I got to the end, I realized, “I can’t do this business right now.” I didn’t have the infrastructure, logistics, or resources, but still – being who I am – needed something where I could define my own opportunities and professional growth, on my terms.

I started a second business at the other thing I was good at creating: written content. Along the way, I became an expert in entrepreneur consulting/advising. Life required that I pivot, and I did, by identifying opportunities where I could leverage a skill others made fun of when I was younger, to now have others hire me and get paid for that skill.

I was able to grow in the side of a creative business that creatives struggle with: structure and logistics. How to put parameters around the fluid nature of creativity and make it a functioning business. And pursue other professional goals I’d had. After getting that one up and running, I reopened my interior design business. And yes, I run both. People ask which one I like more or which one gets more of my attention; it’s like children, though. They both get my attention, relative to what they need and how active each industry is.

It was a life and business pivot all at once, but made me better at interior design and more skilled at running the logistics side to be clear about processes and stages. It’s made it a better experience for the client because when I’m clear on what’s happening, I can inform them, which goes back to reducing their stress through the project.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

There definitely have been near-death experiences in both businesses, where things dry up abruptly. This summer, toward the end, four bathrooms decided to not move forward, all at about the same time. Very unexpected. It was a situation where I believed I’d put enough backups in place, but didn’t count on all of them changing their minds at the same time.

Concurrently, the market changed dramatically this year, and clients have been responding to the tumult and instability of the tariff situation by being unpredictable. It became almost building from scratch again, except with a lot of experience underneath me, as well as connections. Having seen this happen before, I knew what to do to get visibility again.

In addition, because I always scan the industry landscape to be aware of what’s happening, look for new opportunities, figure out what others are doing to secure clients, I strategized. Applying opportunity recognition, knowing I can’t lower my rates because I’m too experienced and it devalues my expertise, I created new service lines at a lower investment. I also went old-school with prospecting.

Because failure is not an option, and I know clients exist – because I know my industry. And I’m very skilled at creating opportunities for myself that resonate with clients, and also knowing who my clients are to target effectively. Being in business you have to develop a persistence, a stamina for facing the tough times like this. If you don’t, if you freak out rather than strategize, then near-death becomes business closure and becoming one of the statistics.

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