We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Susan Semmelmann. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Susan below.
Susan, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?
I have always said, you will never know unless you try! You have to convince yourself starting out with nothing at the beginning that you have nothing to lose, and the biggest challenge is being willing to fail! I have a different approach than a very studied, educated decision maker. I launched my own brand 3 years ago on pure faith! That’s it! I felt the call to go out into the world and had no vision other than freedom in store. I only wanted to do what I love to do, design. I had a handful of co-workers who believed in me and wanted to do what they love, sew, design and encourage each other from the ground up. I started with one design job from a friend 30 days after I opened my door and the rest is history! I recall after 6 weeks walking into my office and holding up a small check and saying, I can pay you! They all cheered!! From that point one job turned into 11 in 3 months, 30 in a one year and now we are servicing over 70 clients ongoing and have a team of 17 to back our true joy each day. the love for people and the love of design. Our core values are not a tagline, they are the world around me and my team. Faith, relationships, fingers in the dirt, attitude for gratitude and experts in our field. I fully believe you will get back what you put into it as long as your heart is in the right place. I believe the spirit of living is in the giving. Home is a sanctuary. Family is everything. Faith is the foundation. Giving is the response.
Susan, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
In my family life I have an amazing husband and three wonderful kids, I’ve been in the construction and design industries for 25 years; this line of work has always been a natural fit for me. My husband and I owned a construction company for many years, which helped shape the way I see all aspects of design. I gained years of experience integrating design elements into the foundation stages of a home during the construction detailing process. Creating something beautiful from the ground up, from the framework to the finishing touches, is pure magic. It’s the realization of a dream for my clients, and I am grateful to be part of that process. Giving back to those around me is the common thread that flows through everything I do and everything my company stands for – it’s my cornerstone. Taking the knowledge I had in construction is what has fully throttled the design vision to be able to go into homes and create areas with deep levels of creativity knowing we can take from vision to execution.
My work, and the work of my team, speaks for itself through awards acknowledging our professional and philanthropic pursuits, including Philanthropist of the Year, Best of Design and Furnishings, Best of Houzz, Best Luxury Interior Design Firm in Texas, Most Influential People in Fort Worth, Entrepreneur of Excellence Award, Most Innovative Interior Design Firm, and 10 Most Powerful Leaders Revamping the Future along with Top Most Influential People award. I also have the honor of being a five-time Fort Worth Dream Home designer. Although awards are affirmation that we are doing something right, it is only just that, an award. You have to continue to have fingers in the dirt as I say in order to know you are continually willing to grow and bring the game. There will never be a comfortable day of slacking because we have tremendous vision to always want to be cutting edge.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Be yourself, be authentic and share your heart, it’s your voice to communicate your vision. People want to hear you and how you see things, feel things and believe in things. I am very passionate about this. With the growth I have had from zero to over 100K followers combining platforms, I still do all my own marketing and social media because I wake up each day, dig into my soul and spill out what I feel on social media. I am trying to hang on to doing it for this mere fact. There is no sugar coating that this is very time consuming and requires thought. I wake up very early each day, have my quiet time and then post as a morning ritual, otherwise the day to day interactions take me away. No one can communicate with you the way you can. If you have someone helping you, then they have to know the inside of you true and true to be able to speak your heart.
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
Core values and living by them! Having a core value on paper is meaningless. We truly walk out our core values and have experience shared weekly. This is my favorite part of the business, relationships. I love to mentor, encourage, elevate my team and give credits to them. There is no “I” in T E A M. There is no way I could have done this without all the people who got us here along the way. Every Monday we have our company meeting to start out our agenda for the week. We call this team focus day. We start out as a family gathering around a big conference table then we break off into departments from operations, textiles, technical design, interior design, finance. Having hands on with each team member allows us all to be able to share our lives together and what really matters. Success is not success if it is not fun along the way. Success to me is knowing my people and team are happy. I love giving to them, spoiling them, elevating them and loving them through life. I do not like the word ” job” and I always tell my team we don’t come to work to have a job, we come to work to do what God has called us to do, impact lives as they impact ours.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.semmelmanninteriors.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/susansemmelmanninteriors/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/semmelmanninteriors
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-semmelmann-50062b181/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBG7xR685DmNcoap7jnkvPA/videos
Image Credits
Realty Proshots for all interiors and headshot by Eye Photography