Main Street Mavericks Business Spotlight: The Nest Design Studio

On the Main Street Mavericks trip to Central Oregon, we started our first interview of the day with Emily Head of The Nest Design Studio. Located right in downtown Sisters, Oregon, Emily’s interior design studio is a one-place stop for designing a space as unique as you are. Initially helping design homes as a partnership with her husband’s construction company, Emily ventured out on her own after the housing market collapse left her thinking about the future.

Come meet The Nest Design Studio!

Q&A with The Nest Design Studio

Tell us about yourself and your small business!

I’m Emily Head and I own the Nest Design Studio in Sisters, Oregon, and I’m located here on Hood Avenue. I started it in 2015, and before that, I was an interior designer in this town, but I worked with my husband, who’s a builder. And so I was included in his product. In 2008, we had to totally reinvent ourselves and do completely different things because the [housing] market crashed.

And so when everything started coming back up, I thought, wow, I should just get back to doing what I love. So, I decided to open my own business, and here I am. It started with a tiny little space, and I just had enough room for a desk, a table, and a bed because I wanted to do it. And I moved [to Hood Avenue] just a year after I opened that one.

I do anything from helping people pick out paint colors to designing floor plans for their brand-new homes to remodels. We do lighting, rugs, furniture, bedding, dishware, and anything you can think of that has to do with the home. That’s what we do.

What is your proudest moment owning your business?

I think it’s just the fact that I had the guts to start it, especially after almost losing everything, and then just saying I can do this and … opening it!

Then, I think, to set it up so that I had all the vendors that I needed. And I think one of the coolest things I did was the first house I got to do everything on — pick everything out. Everything that was in the house was my design, including all the furniture and the rugs, as well as the tile, the fixtures, and the lighting. And when you get to do that, it’s like you really get to see the whole vision. You finally get to see it all come together. And that’s what makes me the happiest.

What is your top piece of advice for small business owners?

My top piece of advice for small business owners is: Just do it.

I was scared. It was scary. But if it’s something you have a passion for, you’re going to be successful.

And then find somebody who can help you and has the opposite strengths. Now, I’ve had two different assistants who were the opposite of me. Thank heavens, because I’m creative, but I needed somebody to be a little bit more detail-oriented with accounting and proposals and things like that, where my brain works differently.

What is the best part of being a small business owner?

There are so many good parts. One is that I can make my own schedule. So when I first started this, my kids were young, and I didn’t want to miss any games. And we had to travel two hours to get to games. So I would close my business and say, I’ll see you, make an appointment, or call me if you have questions, but I’m at a game.

So, that was a huge benefit to owning my own business when my kids were young. And it still is because I can do the same. And then I just love being in charge of my own schedule — what I’m doing every day. I don’t love having a boss who tells me you have to be here now, and you have to do this.

I love being able to say that today, I’m going to do this. I love being in charge of what my day looks like.

What is your favorite thing about your business?

This is a double-edged sword. I think my clients are my favorite thing, but I’ve also had the opposite where they make it really hard. So I think that’s something that I’ve struggled to do is try to find the clients that fit because not only do I want to fit their needs, but They also are a huge part of my life for the period that their project is going on.

So if I’m doing a job with them that lasts over a year, that could be a terrible year if they’re challenging clients. In the same breath, if they’re great clients and they’re fun to work with, then it makes your life so much easier and so much better. And those people remain friends for years.

And I still have clients from 20 years ago that I talked to all the time. That’s the best thing.

What’s one challenge you are facing, and how can the community help?

I guess that some people still don’t know that I’m here.

Even though it opened in 2015, I think there are people who come in almost once a week. “Oh, I didn’t know you were here!”

Spread the word! And I think the challenge is keeping jobs, having them keep coming in, having consistency with jobs. That’s one challenge that I face, but I think that’s something that everybody faces in all businesses.

I do get lots of referrals. Some people come in off the street, and then builders also tell clients about me because they can tell that these clients need help. They can’t do it on their own. Hey, you should go talk to Emily.

Has your background always been in interior design?

When I got out of college in ’97, I graduated in interior design with a bachelor’s degree. And then we moved to Portland, and I got a job with an independent designer who was a really nice lady — and that was a bridge job. It kind of got me started. Then I worked for Neal Kelly — they do design remodels and mostly kitchens and baths. I was an assistant there, and I realized that’s not the kind of business I like.

They were great, and I learned a ton, but I felt like it was sales-based. I know this job is sales-based, but I didn’t really want to focus on it. “Okay, did you sell that?” So it was a great job, though. It got me into the field, and I learned so much. Then, we moved over to central Oregon when our kids were little.

And my husband’s dream was to be a general contractor and build houses. We bought some land here in town. And he’s said: you can design these houses. And I said, I’m not an architect. He goes, that’s okay. You know what you’re doing. Just start drawing.

I designed the first couple houses that we built. Then, it turned into spec houses, and those were sold before they were finished. The next step was to get some custom houses, and I’ve designed most of the houses he’s built since then. Now, I involve an engineer because I’m not an architect, but I’m a designer, and I know enough to be dangerous or to draw the plans and make them, but it’s fun to work with the clients and figure out what they want and make it a reality from the very beginning to the finish.

So yes, my background’s always been interior design. But when the market crashed, my husband was a paramedic, and I did hair. So, for about five years we did something completely different because we wanted to stay here.

And so that’s what made us get through that time.

And then tell us about that moment when you knew your talent could be a small business.

When I was doing hair, towards the end of the fifth year, I thought, there’s this little building, it was like I described, just a one-room office, and I started thinking, I could start design because I even had hair clients say, “Hey, could you help me with this?”

And I’m like, why am I not doing this? I decided that if I had a showroom, then I could sell things like bedding and fabric, and then I could go on from there. And so I decided that I would do that a couple of days a week. So I still did hair, and then I would be in the office a couple of days a week, and people would drop in and say, “Oh, could you help me with my kitchen?”

And so when I got enough jobs, I decided that I didn’t need to do hair anymore. Not that I didn’t love that too. I loved it, but it wasn’t my first love; this is what I felt like I was always meant to do. So it was a big leap for me because it was a risk, but I tried to keep the risk low.

I got this job in California doing a house in Laguna Beach, and it was right on the beach. It’s my sister’s in-laws. It was a great experience. That was when I was still doing hair, and that gave me a little bit of money to put into my business, you know.

And less than a year later, I moved into this bigger space, and I am busting at the seams now.

Do you have plans to grow?

It’s hard to stay. I want to stay small because I don’t want to feel like I have to be open every weekend and be here. I want a life still, so I’m trying to stay small, keep the overhead low, and just do as much work and fit as many things as I can here to make my business work.

Do you have a signature style?

I try not to because I really want it to fit the architecture and the client. Of course, I’m pretty picky, and I have a lot to say when the client says, what about this? But I don’t know if there’s a style per se because I try hard not to repeat things. I try to fit the architecture in the client, and every client is so different, and every home is really different.  So, it’s fun to try different styles. Cause that’s what I love. I don’t want to do just one.

Do you have a house trend right now that you wish people would stop?

Everybody wants to paint their houses white. It doesn’t work here. [Sisters] is like the dirtiest place ever. So the white houses will just look really bad. When I first started, everybody came in and wanted their house to look like Joanna Gaines; everything she did–  Joanna Gaines. And I understand. And I loved their show.

They were so sweet, really neat people. But I wasn’t going to do that for everybody. I did not want to. And they made everything look so, so cheap. And so people would come in and say, “Oh, we could do that for this price.”

And it’s never that way. Sisters is probably one of the most expensive places in Oregon. Not only is it expensive, but the trades are more expensive, as are the products. Cause we’re bringing it from the I-5 corridor. And so we’re paying more in shipping. It’s just a lot different than what they show on TV.

So what about the opposite question, a design feature that you love?

My answer may not be what you were thinking. I just like things to be very them, like really fit the person and have it really mean something to them. We have a client in Black Butte right now, and you walk into the house, and it’s so different from every house in there because it is, And she even said it: This is so us. And I take that as the biggest compliment because I’ve used her input enough and I helped to come up with more to make it feel like hers. And it really is a cool house. Just all the little details that make it hers. And so I think that’s when I’m the most proud of a job, when they say something like that, and when this is so us.

And that’s what I like the most about houses when it really speaks to the client, when they feel like it’s theirs.

Do you have any advice for people wanting to start a design studio?

Have a space, a studio space — I would do this all day long over running it out of my home.

So you either charge enough for your time, or you have a studio where you can sell everything out of, and then you get wholesale pricing, and then you can make a little bit more money on it. And it doesn’t cost that much to have the products here. A lot of the tile companies, we’ve paid a fraction of the cost of what you think it would be to have the tile in here.

So it’s worth it for that. And I also like not being in my home. I got very distracted because I would say, Oh, I think I’ll start dinner. Oh, I should check the laundry. But here, I am focused on work, and it helps me focus. And then I guess I’m really trying hard to work on my Instagram account, so that people can see what I do.

I think every interior designer should have a website and then an Instagram account and kind of pictures of things that they’re working on; I think it makes people realize, “Oh, they do good work,” and then they’ll reach out to you. So that’s, I think, my advice for designers is to make good partnerships.

But I just think partnerships with the right companies and the right people can make the studio better and make your business better.