Why does everyone think they can do this profession of ours? Why is it that, to the public, it appears so easy to practice that almost anyone with a bit of aesthetic eye can do it? That all interior designers do is nudge a few things just a bit better than the able amateurs? And…
Category: Coaching
How to design, shop, renovate and decorate like a PRO. Do you want to become an interior designer? Here is what you need to know!
What interior design really is and the value of great advice
One of the difficult things to pay for is intangible, hard-to-understand, hidden-value advice. Why would you? When you go and buy something, you have it in your hand. When you go and rent that holiday villa, you’re in it, living the life. When you have kidney stones, and the doctor tells you how to get…
Retrospective Best Of ‘Coaching’
With an average growth rate of 3.4% per year between 2017 and 2022 the Interior Design industry doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. Although the field was met with many challenges over the last few years, including finding new ways to work remotely and getting creative to deal with the never ending project and…
Staffing the new way: what app to get instead of a person to do what you need?
A design practice is multi-faceted, unlike others. It’s at the cusp of four very different sets of skills that need to be mastered equally: highly trained professional knowledge, a tremendous amount of soft skills, especially people-pleasing skills, the capacity to communicate verbally and visually and last by definitely not least, be a masterful time-manager with…
Do you own your interior design practice? Where do you focus your attention and what do you prioritize? part 2
If you have the will to succeed, by far the most important skills to build are those related to how to recognize, attract and leverage talent for your firm. This is the only skill that will free up the time required for you to focus on the growth of the business, which is the absolute,…
Do you own your interior design practice? Where do you focus your attention and what do you prioritize? part 1
Being your own boss in interior design is not as easy as you think. If you work by yourself and generate enough income to support your basic self, live the life you want, save for a rainy day and, yes, save for that retirement that willy-nilly will come, then you’re good. If you have what…
What is good communication and why in design it mostly means perfectly organizing myriads of decisions
Good communication is about clarity of expression. That’s what we were all taught from the early days, and that’s the first mistake. Asserting that the control of communication is in the hands of the sender while ignoring that interpretation at the receiver’s end is as crucial, is the exact recipe for the Tower of Babel….
Welcome to the world of small business: small profits, little free time, big satisfaction and large freedom
There once was a dream that turned out to be the birth and death of me. Like many before me and so many more after, I wanted to be my own boss. And with that in mind, I started on a path of self-destruction where I erased many things that I knew in order to…
Top Ten Most Cherished Highlights of 2021 at Dochia Interior Design
It is said that in moments of crisis some fold and some flourish. I would say that we at Dochia have definitely flourished!! From international awards and recognition to a 300% increase in our followers across all social platforms, from accolade development projects to luxurious residences, we’ve had a prolific and accomplished design year! Many…
Home Pods: how to make one and what to do with it
Aside from Cleaning Day or, more specifically, the day after when everything is perfect and a pleasure to look at, we don’t really spend time looking at our homes as if we are a visitor in a museum or flipping through a design magazine. We just go about the day and do what we normally…
Three tips for chores made easy when it comes to rug maintenance
I love rugs. They are nice on your feet and make barefoot walking a great sensorial experience. They enhance your tactile connection to your home in a direct and natural way. Aesthetically, any room can go from elegant to fun by swapping a rug and not changing anything else in it. This is particularly useful…
How to choose what you want to focus on in your interior design career
How you look at things in general and how you frame the expression of your thoughts reveals information about them that you would not generate nor learn otherwise. All things being equal, there are many similarities and many differences between the various areas of interior design. Simply put, the commonalities have to do with…