Leading With Intentionality
Speak with Melissa Galt for ten minutes and you notice she doesn’t waste a word, not on her thirty years in the industry, not on her two businesses, and not on you. Intentional is the word. She applies it to everything.
Melissa is a business coach, strategist, and marketing consultant for interior design principals who want to grow with less time, less effort, and no burnout. She founded Melissa Galt Inc. in 2010, after three decades building her own design practice. She’s known for cutting through the “shoulds” of running a business to deliver design firm success without the sacrifice.
We sat down with Melissa to talk with her about entrepreneurship, lessons she’s learned, and advice she has for interior designers. Keep reading for the full conversation!
Q&A
What prompted you to launch your own coaching business?
I ran my own design practice in Atlanta for 30 years and grew it to multiple seven figures. Coaching didn’t exist when I started in design, so there was no model to follow. I was head down landing clients and never networked with other firms, because I was too busy building.
At the five-year mark, it was time to compare notes with colleagues and peers, so I attended a couple of designer events. When we started comparing numbers, mine were roughly five times theirs. I knew it wasn’t my talent, there were designers who had more experience, more talent, and more tenure.
The difference was systems. I had marketing engines, processes, and SOPs in place, which let me run a higher revenue, higher profit business with a boutique team. I also charged accurately, and designers are notorious for discounting because they don’t know their value.
Over time my business changed and so did my interests. Thirty years in, I loved the business and marketing side more than the design side, and that is where I deliver the greatest value.
I ran both design and coaching for about ten years, then stopped designing officially in 2022 and went full time as a coach. I don’t know how to do anything at 100%, so I do it at 120%! And there’s nothing more exciting than celebrating the wins that my designers achieve in a very short time.
What made you want to work for yourself as opposed to someone else?
I spent five years in corporate hospitality purchasing, moving cities, states, and companies every eight months as I climbed. Hospitality requires long hours, and dealing with a lot of different personalities, it’s stressful. And I loved the immediate transformation I’d create in the department and then want to move on.
I was the turnaround artist, taking a purchasing department from upside down and losing money to right side up with strong systems, strict quality controls, and responsible ethics. The day-to-day operations didn’t interest me, so when I completed the turnaround, I looked for my next opportunity.
My mom had passed suddenly six months after I graduated from Cornell, and I’d been determined to make her proud in the field she chose for me. After five years, I went back to school for a design degree. It was my choice this time, not someone else’s dream. Her dream was a worthy one, it wasn’t mine.
My last hotel position was in Birmingham, AL, and it had a very low cost of living. I gave myself six months in the classroom before taking my first full-time design job, then averaged 18 months between positions: first a commercial architecture firm and Steelcase dealership, then a residential fabric gallery, and then I moved to Atlanta to work at Ethan Allen.
I learned a lot there, about systems, clients, and how insanely bored I got sitting in a showroom all day waiting for clients to find me. It was about the 18-month mark (there’s a pattern here) that I argued with my manager about vacation. She said I didn’t have any, I knew I did. I took my vacation and got the vacation paycheck; it was my last.
My business had a startup plan, but this occurred six months premature to that date. I was $70,000 in debt, living in a cramped apartment with too many credit card bills, no income, and no clients. I did pick up a job supervising a catering kitchen at $10/hour on weekends.
Weeknights were devoted to teaching decorating classes to busy professionals at evening education at two local universities. It was a great way to land early clients which I did in 90 days. My days started early; I hustled to land clients. And I invested the next five years into building my business by saying “yes” to every client who showed up. I wasn’t selective or discerning and was sacrificing myself entirely to my business, the burnout was real.
The epiphany came on a Sunday afternoon in my beautiful terrace office. I was working 80 hour weeks, I had not taken a vacation in five years, and there I was heading into the office again. It had to stop.
I hauled out all 40 of my active client files on the conference table and looked for similarities. Eight to ten were favorites. And I noticed they had a lot in common with each other; my ideal client avatar was identified. The rest were lovely people who were not my people, small projects with endless hand holding, nickel and dimers, energy vampires.
Pareto’s Principle was at play inside my practice, 80% of my revenue came from 20% of my clients. While 20% of my revenue came from those I was less rewarded by. I decided to wrap up the small projects and focus exclusively on my ideal clients and larger projects. My revenue, that had doubled every year, did so again, but this time my workload dropped in half, and I took my first vacation in 5 years. Three glorious weeks to Australia and New Zealand!
And I already had my well-trained team in place, and they finally go to show me their brilliance. When I left the country, I couldn’t micromanage any longer, I had to let go. It was a big success, and I finally stepped off the burnout trail and out of being the bottleneck in my business. Scaling was sustainable and successful now.
What’s a lesson you’ve learned from your entrepreneurial journey?
Be solution oriented. I don’t see problems, I see solutions, and I never bring an issue to a client until I have two or three fixes in hand.
I trained my contractors and team the same way. If something comes up on a job site, do not share it aloud, do not make a call. First, go to your vehicle, roll up the windows, ensure no one else can hear you, and give me a call. We determine the solutions before the client ever knows there’s a problem.
We also have a leadership crisis in design. Designers are not leading anymore; they are letting clients lead and that means they’ve got a tiger by the tail. Clients are not qualified to do what a designer does, and they cannot lead a project successfully. The designer needs to step up, take responsibility and control.
I led from the first meeting as though the prospect was already my client. Today in coaching discovery sessions I always ask, “Would you be okay if I treat you exactly like a client?” I don’t pitch and I don’t sell, and I don’t teach pitching or selling. I teach educating into the value of transformation.
My definition of a successful design practice is one that informs and inspires you, fuels and feeds you, and serves and supports the WHOLE of your life; it does not swallow you whole. A thriving business delivers the time and the resources for your extraordinary life.
Melissa Galt, Melissa Galt Inc.
What’s one of the biggest mistakes you see your clients making?
Ignoring red flags. You can absorb one or two. Past that, you will lose your peace of mind and your profit.
Designers are people pleasers. All my clients share the same instinct: they want to serve and they want to rescue. Rescuing costs you as much as working for free. You want to design for clients and create priceless interior transformations. Design is an investment with a 15–20-year return. You don’t get that from a car. Frame it that way and clients will invest more.
Another mistake is selling the way you buy. If you shop at TJ Maxx or Home Goods and you source for your clients the same way, there is a lack of originality and quality in that. Uplevel your sourcing game.
There is a lazy loop we fall into, returning to the same resources on every project until every project looks alike. Your clients are not alike. Get out of the easy sources and explore more deeply.
Interior design is an intimate business. We climb inside a client’s life, their inner sanctum, their home. We need to know what is in their closet, their bathroom, their nightstand. That puts a client in a vulnerable position, and if a designer cannot bring their own vulnerability, the client feels exposed and friction follows. Share something of yourself without oversharing: what you do when you are not designing, whether that is cooking, the golf course, or your kids.
Look for the connections you have with them, because points of connection become points of profit. Designers tend to go generic on their websites and social media, and by not letting anyone in, they close the door on the client who would have said, “Hey, me too.”
What’s your favorite part about leading your own practice?
The transformations. I am deeply attached to my designer’s success, and I am the one on the sidelines cheering. When they stumble or get stuck, I get them back in action and make sure they keep going.
This is a democracy. They choose what they want and run their business their way. A 40-hour week? Done. A 10 a.m. start? Let’s make that work. No new construction, or nothing but new builds? Fantastic, I will show you how.
I want them to have a business that lights them up, that gets them out of bed in the morning and lets them close the day feeling fulfilled and satisfied, with room for the extra trips.
My definition of a successful design practice is one that informs and inspires you, fuels and feeds you, and serves and supports the WHOLE of your life; it does not swallow you whole. A thriving business delivers the time and the resources for your extraordinary life.
While I felt financially successful in my first 5 years, the truth was that I was emotionally, mentally and nearly physically bankrupt, on the burnout path. My bank account grew rapidly, but I had no time for life or friends. It took reaching a breaking point for me to see that and understand there is a difference between growth at any cost and sustainable scaling of a design practice.
That is why I start every client with a vision board and roadmap to scaleability that holds both work and life. I don’t judge what is on it. I put dates on it, we set the milestones, and we make it real.
How did you first get involved with WithIt?
I was the keynote speaker at the 2009 conference, where I spoke on building your signature success. It is a phenomenal organization, and I encourage designers to get involved. This industry requires everyone, and everyone must work together to make it successful for all.
Why do you think an organization like WithIt is still important today?
We are in a male dominated industry, and the most curious part is that it is largely men selling to women. There are many traditional family dynasties in home furnishings, yet their buyers are culturally and generationally diverse women across the globe. It represents an interesting Mars/Venus gap.
Men and women are wired differently, it’s not good or bad, it simply is. That gap is one of the real challenges the industry carries. WithIt plays a leading role in closing that gap and creating more opportunities both short term and long term for talented professional women to have an impact.
WithIt carries enormous drive, passion, and experience, along with opportunities for branding, branching out, and creating new paths. I am very fortunate to have been introduced to them so early and be able to share them with designers and female professionals throughout home furnishings.
A few years ago, I attended an awards ceremony in Las Vegas honoring designers who create furniture. Not one woman had been nominated. I sat there stunned, thinking about an industry that is roughly 75% women and 25% men. I want to be certain that never happens again. Women make an essential, integral contribution to every aspect of the home furnishings business.
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