As a creative at heart, you likely started your business because you love design. Maybe it’s interior design, styling or an art form like ceramics or textiles. Talent got you through the door. And then the business grew and you realised that making beautiful things is only one part of the job.
Learning to grow a design business means picking up a whole new skill set. Strategy, systems, leadership and money all land on your desk. It’s a big shift, and nobody hands you a manual. So we asked the people who’ve been through it. Designers and creative founders share what surprised them, what they struggled to hand over, and what they wish they knew sooner when scaling a business.
Ready to go from creative to CEO?
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The moment you realise talent isn’t enough
“Being a great stylist gets you the job. Running a business gets you the next ten” says Cat Brown of premium property styling company ARCH Melbourne.
“The moment it clicked was when I realised I was the bottleneck in every single process — quoting, installing, invoicing, Instagram, supplier orders, all of it. I was the business. Which meant the business could only grow as fast as I could personally move. That’s not a business, that’s a job with extra steps.”
Jem Juthamat, founder of Dosse Studio, had the same realisation. “There comes a point where you realise you’re not just designing spaces, you’re building a brand, managing relationships, making financial decisions, marketing your expertise and thinking strategically about where you want the business to go.”
Their experiences highlight a common challenge for creative founders: the skills that help you build a successful business aren’t necessarily the ones that help you grow it.
Most creative founders hit this point sooner than they expect. The work is going well. Clients are happy. But somewhere between managing projects, chasing invoices and making business decisions, the job has become about much more than design.
The next challenge is learning how to build a business that doesn’t depend on you for every decision. That means developing new skills in leadership, strategy, systems and financial management.
Learning beyond the studio
Not every creative founder starts with a business background. Some learn through trial and error, others seek advice from mentors, and some pursue formal study to develop the skills they didn’t acquire through their design training.
Aimee Tarulli, founder of Archer Interiors, brought more commercial experience to her business than most.
“In my past career I was a Group Account Director in a multinational advertising agency for over 10 years, so running a successful business and implementing strong processes has always been the driving force underpinning Archer Interiors.”
For designers without that background, further education can be one way to build confidence in areas such as leadership, financial management, strategy and business operations. An online Master of Management, for example, offers an opportunity to develop those skills while continuing to work.
But sometimes, the biggest lessons come from recognising when your existing approach is no longer working.
“When my first child was about 6 months old, I reached a crossroads with Style Curator,” Gina Beschorner, Founder of Style Curator explains. “We had just won an international award for Best Interiors Blog and suddenly, opportunities were coming in faster than I could manage them.
“As much as I loved the creative side, I was a first-time mum with a very full plate and I knew something had to change. That was when I realised Style Curator couldn’t continue as a passion project that I squeezed in around everything else.
“I started working with a partnerships manager, resigned from my corporate role and began wearing the business-owner hat as seriously as the creative one.”
Learning to let go
At first, doing everything yourself makes sense. You know the clients, the suppliers and the standard you want. But there comes a point when you simply can’t do it all.
The signs are easy to spot. Your hours keep creeping up and life feels out of balance. A busy fortnight is normal. But when the workload never eases, it might be time to bring in some help.
Starting with a freelancer or contractor can be a lower-commitment way to get stated while you work out what the business really needs… and what it can sustain.
“It’s hard to delegate at first, but if you have the right people in your team they will be the key to future growth,” says Aimee wisely. “Delegation is key — trust in your team and don’t gatekeep.”
The hardest part is often the mindset. If every decision runs through you, you become the bottleneck. You also lose the time you need to find new work and plan ahead.
“Every stage of letting go has been hard!” laughs Gina. “I used to be a perfectionist, and it took a long time to accept that sometimes, done is better than perfect.
“More recently I’ve adopted the, ‘who, not how’ mindset. Instead of automatically asking, “How am I going to get this done?”, I ask, “Who is the right person to help me do it?”
Cat offers practical advice to help you stop being a bottleneck in your business.
“Track your time for two weeks. Actually track it — not in your head, write it down. Every task, every hour.
Because if you are doing everything, you are growing nothing.
“At the end of two weeks, you’ll see exactly where your time is going. The tasks eating the most time are almost never the ones that require you. That is your first hire — not the exciting one, the unglamorous one. The one who gives you your time back.”
Systems make growth possible
Your business can only grow as far as your own capacity. If every client chat, project step and decision runs through you, growth stalls. The processes that worked for a handful of clients won’t work if you’re trying to manage everything on your own.
For Cat, the importance of building a resilient business became painfully clear when one professional relationship ended. “I lost 80% of my revenue overnight because it was sitting with one relationship. Pipeline went to zero and I had to rebuild from scratch.
That experience taught me that creative quality and operational systems are not in conflict — the systems protect the quality.
Cat Brown, ARCH Melbourne
“The chaos was the thing killing the standard, not the scale.”
Cat’s advice is something Aimee echoes, “I have always said when it comes to running a design business “it’s a process driven business first, and a creative business second” as the latter will not even come to fruition if you don’t nail the process first.”
Gina agrees, saying “Every time I’ve invested in improving a process that we repeat regularly, it’s paid for itself many times over. Whether it be systems for managing our enormous photo library, tracking workflows or managing finances.
“The biggest lesson has probably been that if something feels unnecessarily difficult or time-consuming every time you do it, that’s usually a sign you need a better system.”
Systems don’t make a creative business boring. Done well, they make quality easier. When everyone knows who’s doing what, and where to find things, you get time back for creative direction and clients.
Repeatable systems can help get processes in place. Start by writing down how you handle regular tasks. Next, streamline your workflows and give people clear roles. Project management tools, admin automations and one place for all client communication will help.
Becoming a leader, not just the creative
Becoming a leader doesn’t necessarily mean hiring more designers. Sometimes, the smartest appointment is someone whose strengths are completely different from yours.
“Employ your weaknesses,” suggests Kate Walker, founder of Kate Walker Design.
Project managers, marketers, account managers, developers or financial specialists are just a few examples of the different roles that can support a design business. When you build a team with a variety of strengths, you’re better equipped to scale your services than if you simply hire more designers to increase capacity.
Set the standards, then let your team work within them. Your creative vision can still shine through without you micromanaging every call. Leading also means explaining why the work matters. Your team will inevitably do better when they understand the purpose, not just the task.
Share the successes and the failures and learn from every project. Constantly tweak processes and the way you work based on what went right — and also what didn’t. Growth will follow.
Aimee Tarulli, Archer Interiors
Having a team allows you to offer positions to designers at different stages of their design careers. But don’t forget you can hire for other areas of your business.
“I’ve deliberately kept the business lean,” says Gina. “I have a fantastic core team of three and then bring in contractors when we need specialist skills or additional capacity.
“I want to spend my time growing the business and creating great content, not managing people for the sake of managing people.”
Understanding the numbers
Let’s talk money. It might not be the reason you started a creative business, but understanding your numbers is one of the most important skills you’ll develop as a founder. After all, a busy business isn’t necessarily a profitable one. Creativity builds a design career, but knowing how that creativity performs financially gives you a roadmap.
Start by tracking revenue, profit margins, cash flow and how much of your team’s time is billable. Weigh up the cost of winning new clients and consider your cash flow. Together, these will show you whether growth is making your business healthier.
These numbers also guide big decisions, like hiring. Before you add a full-time team member, look ahead at your forecast. Will the workload stay steady or rise? If you’re unsure, a contract role is the safer choice.
Numbers also show which services and clients earn the most. That helps you decide where to spend your time, and when to invest. Data won’t replace creative instinct but it does back it up.
“A tough lesson I’ve learnt as a business owner is that money coming into the business isn’t the same thing as money you have available to spend,” says Gina wisely.
“You can have a fantastic few months, look at the bank balance and think the business is flying. Then BAS, income tax, insurance and other business expenses fall due, and suddenly the picture looks very different.
“A great tip I’ve recently implemented is having a banking system where tax obligations are automatically set aside as revenue comes in. It sounds incredibly simple, but it means the money sitting in the operating account gives me a much more realistic picture of what the business can actually afford.
“That’s also helped me become more disciplined about scaling slowly and sustainably rather than making decisions based on revenue alone.”
Aimee agrees, saying a financial lesson she wished she learnt much earlier is, “Save, save, save! You never know what’s around the corner and when you will need it. In business and in life.”
How to grow without losing what made you successful
Growing a creative business doesn’t mean saying yes to every opportunity or building the biggest team possible. Sometimes it means turning down work that isn’t the right fit, keeping your business lean or holding onto the creative responsibilities that matter most.
Aimee learnt that when growing her team, “Our creative output is what we are known for. Early on I tried to share the creative responsibility with a team member at the time but it didn’t work. I found our clients really wanted me. Perhaps I didn’t have the right person but it’s something that we will consider extending in the future, with a new set of processes based on that learning.”
Understanding my value, being intentional about the projects and partnerships I take on, and recognising that not every opportunity is necessarily the right opportunity.
Jem Juthamat, Dosse Studio
For Gina, it means returning to one simple question: “Does this help someone create a home they love?”
Jem reminds us that becoming a CEO isn’t a single milestone.
“I’m still learning and evolving, and I think that’s an important part of entrepreneurship. You don’t suddenly become a CEO overnight. You grow into that role through experience, challenges and learning when to work on your business rather than constantly in it.”
Becoming the CEO doesn’t mean leaving the creative side behind. It means creating the space to do your best creative work. We hope this article has helped give you some insight into how to take your business to the next level. We’re grateful to our experts for sharing their thoughts, wisdom, mistakes and creativity with us.
