Hello and welcome to episode 166 of Design Curious podcast.
I'm your host and mentor, Rebecca Ward.
Today on the podcast, we have guest Nicole Rowe and let me
tell you a little more about her.
Nicole is a taste maker and authentic lifestyle creator and
is founder and creative force behind R Nixon Interiors, A
boutique design firm known for blending bold, elevated
aesthetics with real life functionality.
With over 15 years of experience in construction and design,
Nicole holds a degree in Building Construction from
Georgia Tech and has an extensive working knowledge of
all aspects of the construction process.
Her technical expertise combined with an eye for expressive
design allows her to bring each client's personal brand to life
in their home. Whether it's one of many or
their forever space. Nicole's clients are busy
professionals who value exceptional design and trust her
to deliver spaces that are both impressive and intentionally
crafted. Nicole believes in the power of
design to elevate everyday life. From full home renovations to
curated interiors, her goal is always to create spaces that
function beautifully and feel deeply aligned with her clients
lives. With a deep love for vintage
treasures, adrenaline fueled hobbies, and spa days alike,
Nicole brings an inspiring duality to her work.
Equal parts grounded and adventures.
Under her leadership, Our Next and Interiors continues to
redefine boutique design service with bold vision, next level
creativity, and an unwavering commitment to functional luxury.
I know you're going to enjoy this conversation, so let's get
into it. You're now listening to Design
Curious, a place where you, Creative one, are here to learn
about what it really is like to be an interior designer.
And I'm your host and mentor, Rebecca Ward.
If you're worried about how to succeed in a creative career, if
you're ready to learn your next steps to become an interior
designer, and if you want the satisfaction of doing something
you love every day, you are in the right place.
Grab a coffee, a notebook, and let's dig into today's episode.
Hi Nicole, welcome to Design Curious podcast.
It's great to have you on today. I am really excited to be here.
Yeah, and I just am very curious about your journey.
I love what I've learned about so far.
So let's start way back when you decided to become an interior
designer. How did you get started?
I think like a lot of us, we realize, you know, young in our
life, that we are affected by our surroundings.
We care about our surroundings. You've heard it a dozen or more
times of the moving furniture around, painting the walls,
really trying to figure out as a young child what we wanted our
ideal space to look like. Mine might have included puff
paint on my glass sliding mirror doors, but also some of the
other things. As you get older and transition
into College in your first apartments and you realize you
like a moodier bedroom or you like your furniture laid out a
certain way. But even at this point, the
career of interior design wasn't something that was on my radar.
I wasn't aware that it could be a full career.
Had known decorators growing up that mostly focused on the
pillows and the paint and the window treatments.
But they were all almost kind of side projects or hobbyists and
not full blown interior design firm owners.
Yeah, I just had a conversation last night with another mom from
school, and she knows I'm an interior designer, but she's
like, oh, I have this friend who needs help with the design and
the layout of the plan. Is that So what you do or is
that a contractor? I'm like, no, that's like the
main part of what I do, not just the finishes.
You know, a lot of people just aren't aware of the full whole
scope of what interior design entails.
I agree. I have found so much of what we
do as education. Because you go to the dentist,
you understand what the dentist does, you know, You go to a
psychologist, you understand what a psychologist does.
You hire a gardener, you understand.
Like those services make sense. But interior designers have, you
know, a range of what each designer is capable of or
desires to do. But it's still so many unknowns
of what an interior designer does to the general population.
Yeah, for sure. OK, So you weren't aware that it
was a career. So then how did you start
becoming an interior designer? Yeah, So I went to Georgia Tech,
enrolled as an engineering student.
After a couple of back and forth of what I really wanted my
degree to be, I landed on building construction.
Building construction falls under the College of
Architecture. So you have the ability to take
architecture classes, You took furniture design classes, you
took history of art classes, All of these little touch points of
interior design that at the time I didn't fully realize that's
what I was drawn to. I had a great internship
opportunity with a mixed-use developer who had hired an
interior design firm. So as the intern, this firm
would come in with drawings and materials and fabrics, wearing
boots, walking job sites. And as someone who is being
educated to be a project manager for construction, I was like, I
actually really love what they're doing.
There wasn't the path I really wanted to take those early
mornings, high stress weekends. Interior designers, if set up
appropriately, have the ability to roll into a job site at 9:00
AM, you know, and not at 6:30 AM for a concrete pour, right?
Learning about interiors. Learning how that can be a
flexible career for a mom and a wife really was kind of magical.
And like a lot of designers, it started small.
I didn't open my doors and say I'm doing multi $1,000,000 new
builds. It was paint consultations.
It was bookcase stylings. It was just all of those entry
points, but each client, each referral, each relationship
brought something larger and more in depth.
And we just kept saying yes. And Fast forward eight years, we
have a design studio, a warehouse and a team of really
great team members. Wow.
OK. So that's kind of how you
started scaling. Tell me about that, the
logistics of scaling, Like I know you said that you just
started saying yes to more opportunity, but then there's a
hurdle you have to overcome, right when you're growing and
scaling like that. Yes, I think when I realized
that my best design work was happening at 10 PM 11:00 PM.
Husband and kids had been asleep for hours because that was the
only time I had to sit down and design because the days were
full of ordering and tracking and job sites where there was
never these large blocks of time during the day that I could sit
and design. I realized I started meeting
additional people. Starting with interns is great
because you know they're only there for three months, so you
can try out a lot on them of your management style and really
how you want your firm to operate.
Then allowing them to become design assistants, hiring
procurement. For us, it's a warehouse
assistant. Slowly adding these people and
really figuring out the direction we want to go.
But it's scary, you know, having payroll every week for five
people and lease on a building and really trying to figure out
where your money's coming from is a lot.
Yeah. And I noticed when you start out
your Nicole Rowe design, then you switched the name of the
company to Nixon Design. Is that right?
Yes. So we are now, yeah, we are now
our Nixon interiors. Interiors, OK.
When we began, I was the one woman show.
I got on Fiverr and typed in Nicole Rowe design and asked
somebody to make me a logo for like what, $29.00 like 8 years
ago. And the naivety of me was I'm
going to be a one woman show. I'm going to take on small
projects. Having, you know, a logo in a
bank account was honestly all I thought I needed.
Never in my mind did I think like I'm going to have a logo on
the side of a van or there's going to be a team member.
But as we grew and I knew we were moving out of my home into
an office, this was a little over three years ago, I realized
that I didn't want my name on the side of a building.
I didn't want my name on the side of a van.
I wanted team members to really take pride in ownership in the
company and showing up as one of them to a job site.
It was always, well, where's Nicole?
Where's Nicole? It's Nicole Rd. design.
Why is Nicole not here? But with the rebrand, it gives
everybody else a little bit more power within the company to take
ownership and show up. Because it's not Nicole Rowe
design, it's our Nixon interiors.
And you know who the heck is our Nixon is the question.
We always joke. Yeah.
Telemarketers have no idea who our Nixon is, which is
hilarious. But also I wanted a name that
was elevated, a name that could almost play in a bunch of
different arenas. Wasn't super feminine, a little
masculine, kind of. We love the play of like, who is
our Nixon? I mean, our Nixon really is
everyone. It's our clients.
It's who our clients strive to be.
It's whatever vibe they want to be.
It's so personalized. But it's still a play on my
name, so it's still really special to me.
My last name's Roe. So you have the R and then
Nixon. I was Nicole Erickson before I
got married, so we kind of just smashed it together.
But the logo is fun. It looks like just a fun little
brand if you just have the pill shape.
So I really think starting as my name was great.
I absolutely am proud of what we did.
But for new designers, really thinking through if your firm
becomes a firm, if your brand becomes something larger, yes,
of course you have Amber Lewis and all these, you know, names,
Kelly Worsler that are their name.
But really deciding, do you want it to be your name or do you
want it to be something else? Like Alice Lane Interiors, for
example, which is great. Unless you really listen to
their podcasts or stalk their social media, you may not know
who the owner is and you wouldn't know which designer is
coming out or talking to you. So I love that aspect.
So Alice Lane Interiors could technically send one of 20
designers and the client is not any wiser.
I, I love that approach. I think that's, I thought a lot
of people who coming through my mentorship program, they're
thinking about like, I had to pick a name that's going to last
forever, but you don't. I mean, you do need to think
about that, but you also don't know where your dream wants to
take you too. So like you started out Nicole
Rd. Design, but then you pivoted.
How hard was it to rebrand and change your name?
I will if someone does want to do that later on.
I will say I don't ever want to do it again.
The Arnix and interiors like that will be on my headstone
like when I die. No, I was a little naive to what
that entailed. I understood that you could be
ADBA, so that makes a whole lot of sense.
All of our bank accounts and a lot of our furniture accounts
are still Nicole Rd. Design.
We have to clarify with the vendor what that means.
Like when we go to High Point Market, they're like, you don't
have an account. I'm like, we are actually Nicole
Rd. Design UPS and FedEx and all of
them know we're both. One of the tricky parts was
converting all of like our Google Drive over to the new.
I have since learned there's way easier ways to do it.
But at that very moment, I didn't want to spend all the
money. I didn't know any better.
AI didn't exist, so you couldn't just get in ChatGPT and be like,
how do I do this, right? So we unfortunately lost some
files and some stuff didn't happen as easily as I liked.
We lost our Google page because once again, it was kind of, it
was tricky to change it all. What I didn't know with your
Google business page, if you get on and change everything, they
think you've been hacked. So.
They shut down. Wow, I didn't think about that.
Yes. So what I have since learned for
anyone out there that if you move, don't change your address.
Don't do any of that until your signage is up and all of your
proof of life is there so you can do the video walkthroughs or
else they're going to think you got hacked if you change, you
know, some of the key important things.
So losing Google reviews is hard when there's really no way of
getting them back. So definitely taking it slow,
but don't be fearful of rebranding if you're new
direction, you know, if you no longer want to be some super
sweet name or some super specific name and you want to
rebrand, do it. It just might be worth investing
in someone to help you. OK, good advice.
Yeah, I was curious about that part of it because people ask
all the time and I know it is challenging endeavor, but you
did it. But it's like it probably could
have been then. So maybe people could reach out
and ask you for some. Of course, if they they decide
that they want to do that. So I'm going to touch back on
you started out with engineering, building
construction degree and then going into entrepreneurship.
Both of those areas are male dominated industries.
You'd mentioned also with our Nixon interiors, it's a little
more masculine. Let's talk a little bit about
how the gender plays into being an interior designer in this
today's age. Yeah.
So I think it's a great question because right now one of the hot
topics is masculine energy versus feminine energy and when
to bring both into your design firm.
Even the feminine energy, you know, is the creative work, the
really inspired work though partnering with females.
But the masculine energy and entrepreneurship is something
you do have to hone in on. And as someone who works with
contractors and trades all day, and a lot of our clients are
males as well, and then, you know, I have my husband and we
have 4 boys, so my life is very male dominant.
I love a spa day, you know, I love the opportunity to get away
from that. But I think interior designers
so often can have a bad reputation.
There's so many words that have been used to describe designers
that may not have had a good experience with trades or
contractors. And I think we all just kind of
have to step back and realize, like, what energy do we need to
bring to that moment? Is this a time for the masculine
energy? Do we need to stand firm?
Or do we need to just have a solution and work with everyone?
Because what we do, if the trades or the tile guy aren't on
our team, you know, and excited to work with us, it's going to
be impossible. Yeah, for sure.
So it does take getting to have that confidence on the job site
and everything that they'll listen to you and just value
your credibility, what you're bringing.
Yeah. Now I agree, and I think having
the degree in construction gives me an interesting perspective
because a lot of designers are so new to the world of
construction and there's so much to learn.
I still learn stuff on a daily basis.
Right now I actually have an electrician and my tile guys at
my own house, like literally directly behind me, and we're
trying to work through some stuff for our projects and
designers. One thing I love to tell them is
do projects at your home, even if your budget isn't that of
your clients, like mine is not. But you can experiment, you can
learn, you can have the trades really tell you all the things
and figure it out and do things that you may not have the
confidence to do at a client's house yet in your own home.
And I think that alone, yes, you can use the photos and the stuff
for social media, but it also just is a really good lesson on,
you know, learning your skills and building relationships with
the trades. Yeah, that's really good advice.
Like going back and forth with the trades.
Even if you have a good relationship with your trade,
they might make a suggestion that or have a preference for
doing it a certain way that you know that it's not going to work
for your design. But you might be hesitant to
tell them because they have more experience than you.
So learning how to talk with them, going back and forth,
understanding why, and then maybe even soliciting for your
design in the end as the right solution, all that takes
practice, and doing it in front of a client is hard to do.
So if you can do it in your own home and navigate that and get
experience doing that, I think that's a great idea.
No, it really is because we can make beautiful elevations pre
demo. We draw all the things you know,
we have everything designed exactly how you want it.
Then they tear open the walls. And my house is a great example.
We didn't realize the stairs were going through the old
bathroom vanity. Like literally there's a ramp in
the back of the vanity. And I had no idea.
Like we had never pulled open the back of the cabinet door.
We just assumed it was a false bat because it was built in the
60s. But sitting there with the
plumber and the framer and the demo guy and everybody, the tile
installer to be like, what can we do to make this work?
And we all had solutions. We all had great solutions.
But in the end it was like, OK, your idea plus your idea is what
we're going to roll with. But like you said, doing that in
front of clients sometimes isn't great because they can lose
confidence in really odd things even though there's nothing to
lose confidence about because they just assume you should have
the answer before the walls are open.
But we all know that is not the case.
Right. Yeah, I love troubleshooting on
the spot, but the client really shouldn't be there for that.
Yeah. OK.
So that's really good that you have that background.
Do you recommend that designers take any construction classes or
courses or like how would you recommend a designer who maybe
didn't have that degree in building construction to kind of
get some exposure to a little bit more for just understanding
construction? Of course, I'm sure there's
classes online. I'm sure you could hop onto
YouTube, but a lot of that would take a lot of time.
I would say boots on the ground, Go to job sites often and talk
to everybody, ask questions. I've been up in attics, I've
climbed on ladders. I show up to concrete pores
because we want to know. And they like to tell you there
is nothing more than, you know, a man telling you why frame
something, you know, the way he did learning.
And then the next time you go, you can ask even more questions
and learn more details and figure it out.
And I don't want to say no question.
It's a dumb question, but it really is like being like, oh,
why did you run the plumbing here?
Why is this in the ground? Why is this off center when I
thought the faucet was centered on the wall?
And they can explain. Oh well, because the cabinet,
the P trap has to, you know, if you're off to the left or
whatever it is or why is there plywood here?
I think just asking the questions and showing up more
often and not showing up like in high heels with a clipboard
about to yell at everybody, but really showing up to learn.
People really respect that, yeah.
And understanding that asking questions doesn't mean that
they're going to, like you said, that they want to share that
information with you. They're not going to think less
of you. Probably they love that you're
asking and you want to know. So don't worry about asking
those questions. Just go for it.
Yeah, yes, of course. So how many?
People, do you have working right now at your firm or in
your production? Yeah, no, of course.
So in staff we have myself. So I operate as the founder and
the lead designer as well as the many hats that we wear.
I then have a designer who does all the technical drawings.
She does a lot of the sourcing and kind of putting everything
together, as well as some project management depending on
the project. Then we have our operations
specialist, so she handles really all the back end, the
procurement, the tracking, the vendor communication, any of the
office stuff that needs to get worked out.
Then we have our brand coordinator who also does some
personal assistant executive assistant roles for me as well.
Manages social media, manages back end, just really helps with
all the other things. We tend to always have an
intern, ours just rolled off and went back to school.
And then we also have our warehouse assistant who really
does manages the back of the house.
Whenever we get deliveries we do our own receiving.
So he will open the packages, inspect them, document them,
repackage them and place them in the warehouse where they need to
go to install day. Then who delivers?
You have a receiving, but then do you have your own team
delivering as well? No, We.
Actually partnered with at the moving company that's right up
the road from us. They handle all that.
Looking into it, the logistics of having that many people like
under you and the insurances don't really make sense.
So having the ability to hire out and hire the number of
people, some installs you want 6 movers there and two trucks.
We could never have that on staff.
Well, it's nice that. You have that room though for
receiving and holding that all in in house, so yes it doesn't.
Come without challenges, but we are located in a little bit
smaller of a town with the closest receiving warehouse is
an hour away. So it's explaining to clients
your items are in Orlando, your items are in Tampa and they're
going to stay there for the next four months was really
challenging and with the price of receiving was really high.
So we actually charge a procurement fee which includes
the ordering and the in house receiving and warehousing.
OK, great. So do you have plans to scale
larger if opportunity presents itself?
Yes. By the time this episode
actually airs, it should be the week that we're moving into our
new design studio. We've made the decision to
separate the design studio in the warehouse.
We've realized we need more studio space and we need more
warehouse space. And looking at the options
available on the market, there wasn't anything that felt like
Arnix and Interiors Design Studio elevated client
experience with a warehouse, you know, everything's more
warehousing district. So we have made the decision to
separate. We're on the hunt for where our
warehouse space is going to be. We currently have about 2000
square feet, which if you can visualize that's like 2 full
houses of furniture can comfortably fit or you know, a
few smaller projects. We're looking for about 4005
thousand square feet. OK, Yeah.
That'll allow you to have all your projects going at the same
time for ordering furniture. Yeah, that's interesting.
OK, so any other ways to see your brand scaling?
Like have you thought about retail or having to shop or
online? I know you have a podcast,
though, so you want to talk about that a little bit?
Yeah, we. Have the podcast Season 1
wrapped up this spring. It's called Highly affected by
her surroundings. You can kind of tell by the
title, as designers, we really are affected by the spaces
around us. And it was a really fun
opportunity to connect with other designers, but as well as
like brands and luxury builders. You know, one of our last
episodes was with a South Asian wedding planner coordinator and
like $1,000,000 weddings. And you know, the overlap
between weddings and interiors is really close.
So the podcast has been really fun opportunity to have this
conversation. Season 2.
We should be about halfway through season 2 when this airs
as well. But send me a DM.
We'd love to have more guests on the show as well.
But As for retail, I am not someone that gets super excited
by that idea. I know the logistics, I've had
friends that have done it. Do I love to buy things?
Do I love vintage? Do I love all that?
Yes. Are we going to probably have,
you know, warehouse sales and some similar pop ups?
Of course. It's just the nature.
I think there's some really great designers who have really
done a good job with e-commerce. They had the brand in the
backing and I love to see what they've curated.
That's not necessarily in the plans for us.
I think scaling larger projects, distance projects are definitely
on our radar. Depending on the receiving
warehouse, we'd love to receive for other designers.
That's the goal to allow so many designers around me still aren't
ordering wholesale. They're not doing all the things
because of the challenges. And I would really like to be
able to help them elevate their business.
Yeah. Oh, that's.
Great. Yeah, really is a Better
Business model when you order the wholesale.
So if that's holding them back, then what a great opportunity
for you to help them out. No, I think.
So yeah, so how do? You then stay up to date on
latest trends and what do you do to get inspired for your
designs? I think.
The trend word for so many people is triggering for sure.
And I think right now it's less about trends, but really more
about lifestyle, personal branding, really who the
individual client is. The past 5-10 years, there's
been this back to trend and designers having one signature
style. And I know on one of your
podcasts a couple months ago you talked about this as well, where
it's that signature style is also getting a little tricky
because clients are now ready to not just have the same style as
their neighbor. They really want something
tailored to them, their lifestyle, their family.
So I think allowing designers that confidence to really pull
that out of their clients and design A space that really works
both function and visually for the client, I think it's really
important. Yeah, that's.
Great point of view. So is there any advice that you
have for maybe designers starting out or wanting to get
their own business that you haven't already shared?
Because you've shared a lot of great advice, I know, I think.
Your possibilities are endless. There's so much advice and so
many courses. When I started, there was a
couple podcasts that I listened to, but there wasn't the
accessibility to all the information there is now.
So I think really finding Someone Like You as a mentor or
someone else that can guide you, but confidence is really huge.
Do what you need to do to gain your own confidence, whether it
is courses, whether it's projects at your own house,
whether right now we're redoing like all the rest because that
is what we've realized right now.
We know what we're doing, we're good at what we do.
But whenever there's been an error, ideally not client
facing, but whenever there's been an error, we've realized
like that SOP, there needs some modifications or there wasn't
one that was fully written up. So I think new designers really
learning what SO PS, they need how they want their business to
be, what their ideal client is and not to be afraid to start
small. I think there's so much advice
out there on don't do this or don't do that.
But maybe stepping your way in on a small scale is not a bad
idea. Yeah.
Really good. Well, I think people are going
to want to reach out to you, so why don't you share how they can
do that and where they can find you, of course.
So like I said earlier, we are are like the letter Nixon
NICKSON interiors. We have a website that you can
contact us through, but also Instagram.
I think we're on LinkedIn, we're on Pinterest, we're on Facebook,
we have a YouTube channel that we post on.
So there's a lot of ways. Feel free to send Adm.
Like I said, I have the podcast highly affected by her
surroundings. That's out, but it's really
Designers need designer friends, you know, designers need
contacts. So never be afraid to say hi.
Great. Yeah, we'll put.
All those links in our show notes so people can easily find
you. Thank you, Nicole for coming on
today. It's been great talking with
you. Yes, this is a lot of.
Fun. Thank you so much.
So we've included. Nicole's contact information in
the show notes if you'd like to reach out to her or see her
portfolio. And don't forget that we have
Launch Your Business boot camp coming up in January.
The doors are opening December 1st and so you can get in there.
And don't forget includes a full year membership to my design
mentor. So you have that full learning
platform and mentorship, but then you also have the eight
week launching your business boot camp to go along with it.
So it's really a great deal. You're going to really be
inspired and have all the accountability you need to make
2026 your year for following your passion and starting your
design business. I'd love to see you do that.
You can get on the wait list. The link is in the show notes.
I'd love to see you in there. And that's all we have this
week. Next week we'll have another
great episode and until then, stay creative.
Thanks for listening. If you love this episode, please
leave a rating and a review. This helps me reach other
curious creatives like you. If you have a topic request or
would like to contact me, simply head over to my website
ourawarddesign.com or e-mail me at podcast@ourawarddesign.com.