Featured on this episode:

• Find out more about Amy by visiting her website here and following her on IG @amyvermilloninteriors
• Join The Designers Edge here
• Grab Your Free Script Guide here
• Access the full video interview with Elana Steele of Steele Appliance here

What you will learn from this episode:

• Why construction knowledge is the single biggest differentiator in a design career
• The difference between consulting and managing on a construction project
• What AI actually can’t replace in interior design

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If you’ve ever wondered whether the hard years, the underpaid internships, the firms where you weren’t allowed in the back room, the leap of faith into your own business, were actually worth it, this episode is your answer.

This week, I sat down with Amy Vermillion, founder of Amy Vermillion Interiors and one of the Southeast’s most respected interior designers. Amy and I have followed each other on Instagram for years, connected over DMs, and somehow managed to never meet in person despite running in the same circles. This conversation was a long time coming, and it did not disappoint.

What made this especially meaningful for me is how much we have in common. We both went to design school. We both worked our way up through established firms. And we both started our own businesses in the same year, 2000, which means yes, when we joke about starting at the turn of the century, we absolutely mean it.

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Every Experience Counts. Even the Ones You Hated

Amy’s early career story is one of the most honest I’ve heard. She started with an internship at a high-end cabinet and furniture maker in Chicago, a job she describes as chaotic, uber-technical, and run by someone who was, in her words, absolutely bananas. But she stayed long enough to learn something that would serve her for the next 25 years: at a certain level of client, if they want the island moved an inch, you move the island an inch.

From there she worked in a multi-line fabric showroom at the Chicago Merchandise Mart, where designers would come in and notice she had a real eye. Then came her first official interior design job, where her boss hired her specifically because of her cabinet and furniture background. The lesson Amy took from all of it?

Every single experience counts. Even the ones that feel like detours.

This is something I felt deeply in my own career. Neither of us walked a straight line to where we are today. We paid dues in ways that the current generation of designers sometimes skips — and that grit, as uncomfortable as it was, built something that’s very hard to manufacture later.

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Starting Your Own Business Is Terrifying (And Worth It)

Amy launched her firm from her dining room table with a typewriter and a nest egg from an inheritance. She remembers her first consultation, the first hundred-dollar check a client wrote her, and how she could practically hear the sound of it being torn from the checkbook. It makes her emotional now, decades later.

She filled the early gaps by volunteering to help neighbors with paint colors in exchange for photos for her portfolio. She consulted for a local interior architect whose older, high-net-worth clients wanted someone with more experience. She did an ASID show house that brought in a couple of clients. She built it slowly, one relationship at a time.

I started my own firm the same year and in a similar way. What Amy said that stuck with me is this: starting a business requires you to believe in yourself one minute at a time. Not one year at a time. One minute.

Those were lean years for both of us. But they were also the years that taught us exactly what kind of designers and business owners we wanted to become.

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The Construction Piece Changes Everything

One of the most important threads in our conversation was the role of construction knowledge in a design career — and why Amy believes it’s becoming more essential, not less.

Neither of us set out to be construction-focused designers. Amy says she never thought she’d be on the construction side. I got into it because the women I worked for did it, and I genuinely enjoyed it. But both of us have come to the same conclusion: designers who understand construction are in a fundamentally different position than those who don’t.

Here’s what Amy said that I think every designer needs to hear:

When a client asks why they need a designer when they already have a contractor, the answer isn’t about pretty rooms. It’s about being the one person on the project who genuinely has the client’s best interests at heart. The contractor has a job to do. The architect has a scope. The designer is the through line, the person holding the full picture together from concept through completion.

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Consulting vs. Managing: Know Which One You’re Actually Pricing For

A lot of designers price for consulting — six site visits, limited communication, a defined scope — and then get dragged through a full construction project anyway. And then they feel underpaid, because they are. Not because their number was wrong, but because they were managing a project while charging for consultation.

You’re either all in, or you’re all out.

If you want to be a true construction partner for your clients, price for management. Price for the weekly site meetings, the unexpected conversations with the electrician, the material decisions that come up mid-project because something was hidden behind a wall. Price for the version of you that shows up fully and holds the whole picture — not the version that drops in when the calendar allows.

Amy also made a point about flat fees that I think is worth sitting with. She doesn’t recommend jumping straight to flat fee pricing early in your career, because you won’t yet know how long things actually take you. But once you do know, once you’ve tracked your time, understood your pace, and figured out where your time goes, a flat fee is the structure that respects both you and your client. They get a number they can plan around. You get the freedom to do the work the right way without watching the clock.

And when you present that number? You’re not selling time. You’re selling expertise, access, presence, and the peace of mind that comes from having someone genuinely in their corner.

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You Are a Trusted Advisor. Act Like It

This came up organically in our conversation, and it’s one of the most important reframes any designer can make.

Our clients don’t just hire us to make their homes beautiful. They hire us because they trust us. We knows which clients have marriages under strain, which teenagers might sneak out, and whether a couple showers together. We hold that information with complete discretion — even covering for clients in ways that protect their privacy — because that level of trust is the foundation of the relationship.

Interior design, especially at the level Amy and I both operate, requires clients to hand over enormous amounts of money, access to their homes, and vulnerability about how they actually live. In return, they need to know that the person they’ve hired is not just talented, but trustworthy, discreet, and genuinely working in their interest.

That’s the relationship worth building. And it’s also the relationship that brings clients back and sends them to refer you to everyone they know.

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Community Is Not Optional

Amy made a point that I feel in my bones: interior design can be a very lonely industry, especially if you’re running a small firm or working alone.

Both of us grew up in the industry, working inside firms, surrounded by other designers, learning in a collaborative environment. When you go out on your own, that scaffolding disappears. And without community, it’s easy to spiral in self-doubt, make decisions in isolation, or simply run out of people who understand what you’re actually dealing with.

Amy still reaches out to fellow designers when she hits a wall. I built this podcast, in part, because of how many designers were reaching out to me in exactly those moments. The more open we are about the hard parts, the mistakes, the sleepless nights, the projects that didn’t go as planned, the more we normalize the experience of building a real career.

The days of gatekeeping are behind us. The designers who came up before us protected information as if sharing it would cost them something. What Amy and I have learned is the opposite: the rising tide lifts all boats. And generosity, in this industry, tends to come back around.

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AI, Construction, and Where This Industry Is Heading

Here’s the honest version: AI will replace some of what designers do. The e-design model, the trend-forward shopping service, the rooms assembled from screenshots and Pinterest boards — that work is already being threatened, and it’s going to get harder to defend.

But what AI cannot do is walk onto a job site and notice that an outlet placement is going to ruin a furniture arrangement that hasn’t even been finalized yet. It cannot ask a client how they actually live in their home, whether they share a shower, which teenager is likely to sneak out, what they’ve been dreaming about for thirty years, and then translate all of that into something beautiful and functional and deeply personal.

AI does not have intuition. And intuition, built over years of showing up, asking questions, making mistakes, and learning from them, is exactly what experienced designers bring to the table.

Amy said something I want every designer to hear: the people who are going to lose ground in this industry are the ones calling it in on the daily anyway. The ones assembling rooms from what they see rather than creating something original. The ones who can be replaced because they haven’t built the skills, the relationships, or the presence that make them irreplaceable.

Construction knowledge is a major part of that. Face-to-face communication is another. And the ability to be genuinely, deeply trusted by a client — that is the trifecta. That is what AI will not be able to replicate, at least not in our lifetime.

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What This Industry Rewards

By the end of our conversation, Amy and I had circled back to something simple.

You don’t build a career in interior design by being perfect. You build it by showing up on job sites, at industry events, in the hard conversations with contractors, in the moments when a client is anxious and needs someone to hold steady. You build it by staying curious, asking your trades to explain things, learning something new on every project, and being the kind of person that workers remember because you said hello and treated them like they mattered.

Amy told a story about running into a tradesperson on a job site who recognized her from years earlier — someone who remembered that she had always taken the time to learn people’s names, ask how they were doing, and treat the crew with respect. That kind of thing doesn’t show up in your portfolio. But it shapes your reputation in ways that matter more than any published project ever could.

Careers are built slowly. One project. One relationship. One decision to show up fully instead of pulling back. And over time, if you keep doing that, if you keep getting better, keep building trust, keep being the person in the room who knows why they’re there, the rooms start coming to find you.

Like this Episode?

Be sure to check out Episode #277: The Structural Problem in My Business That Years of Hard Work Couldn’t Fix

Be sure to check out Episode #274: The 4 Moments Interior Designers Cross from Consultant to Construction Manager

Be sure to check out Episode #268: John McClain on Design Business Systems, Pricing & Leading a Profitable Firm