5 Clever Ways Designers Scored Clients Early in Their Career

There’s more to launching your interior design career than setting up a website, opening a business bank account, and establishing an LLC. The most crucial step is also the most difficult: Landing a new client. Even though the right project can catapult your career, newer designers might have a hard time finding a ready and willing customer who trusts them with their time, money, and space (especially when they aren’t equipped with a roster of industry connections, press coverage, or word-of-mouth recommendations). Sometimes, newer designers have to get a little creative—and, yes, scrappy.

To spark inspiration, five designers share with AD PRO the creative ways they landed clients early on in their careers. From utilizing the power of social media to embracing your “inner client,” these stories offer plenty of inspiration to take your career to the next level.

Become your own client

After eight years working under the helm of New York–based designer Nick Olsen, Tara McCauley was ready to launch her own firm. Though she had plenty of industry know-how and connections, she didn’t have a portfolio of her own work. So, she turned her Brooklyn-based apartment into an outlet for her creative impulse—complete with bold pops of color and a hand-painted terrazzo-patterned wall in the kitchen. “[It was] a laboratory for my boldest design ideas,” McCauley notes. “Surrounding myself with personally meaningful items collected over time makes me feel at home.”

In addition to developing the project like she would for a paying customer, she also hired a photographer to take some professional shots. “She found a way to capture everything I wanted to get in each angle and knew exactly how to deal with the lack of natural light,” the designer notes.

Fortunately, all of that investment paid off: McCauley’s apartment has since been featured in New York Magazine as well as on NBC New York’s Open House segment. “I think that having my own space published lent me a bit of credibility at a point in my career where I didn’t have the capacity outside my full-time job to build a portfolio of client work,” she shares. “At the same time, when I speak with potential clients, I do often ask them to keep in mind that in my own apartment I made a lot of bold choices that suited my personal style, but are not representative of what I would do in their spaces.”

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Leverage your first hustle

Though Susan Bohlert Smith is no stranger to the interior design industry, she actually started her career as a muralist, working under the tutelage of a restoration artist and finish expert. (One career highlight? Tending to Carol Burnett’s home in New Mexico.) Smith continued her mural work when she moved back home to Alabama, and noticed a lot of clients would ask for her expertise outside of painting.

“Whenever I was working with a designer on a project, I would recommend that they defer to the designer to be respectful,” Bohlert Smith says. “When a designer was not involved, and the client connected with me directly, they would ask me to create an overall look in the room I was painting in and to be honest with them about what needed to change.”

Over the first three years of her career, she pivoted toward interior design—a process she calls “effortless and right.” And, as luck would have it, one of her first big clients was someone who had previously asked for her advice. “We collaborated and added hand-painted herbs to the door fronts, removed the old wallpaper, and created a South of France wash on the walls,” she recalls. “That turned into having her counters replaced, floors replaced, and family room updated. A year later, she called me and asked if I would work with her and her architect on her dream house that was breaking ground. This was the project that launched me into the full service design world.”

Sometimes, a vision and opinion are all you need.

Seal the deal with social media

Katie Davis was always her circle’s “token design-savvy friend,” but it wasn’t until she and her husband bought their own house that she realized she could harness her great eye into a prosperous career. Problem was, Davis had a law degree and no industry connections. So she harnessed the power of social media. “I posted a call to action on Facebook, letting family and friends know I could help with design projects—bathroom renovations, nurseries, [and the like],” she says. “This is before I even launched my firm.”

After Davis had a few projects under belt, she turned her Instagram feed into a “living portfolio.” She explains, “By that point, it wasn’t so much ongoing outreach to potential clients, but building a moodboard of my work and showcasing my aesthetic so potential clients knew who I was. It gave my firm legitimacy and gave me name recognition to a target audience.”

Not only did her booming social media platform attract new clients, but it also helped her flex her network and design chops by connecting with new vendors. “Recently, we posted the work of a vendor who we ordered a few things from on Instagram; he reached out and inquired about other projects we had and shared other things he had up his sleeve that we might have interest in,” she says. “Instagram really replicates that intimacy between artisan and designer.”

Dare to try a…dating app?

Dating apps like Hinge, Bumble, and Tinder might have revolutionized the modern-day meet-cute, but for designer Kelly Martin those platforms helped her break into bolder projects and a new demographic. “A male friend of mine was talking about how ‘dudes’ apartments’ aren’t usually acceptable for bringing dates home,” she explains. “And that men would probably appreciate a designer’s eye to make them appear to have more taste and sophistication.” 

So, with the help of her friend, Martin created a profile to attract new clients. To keep her presence strictly professional, she filled her profile with marketing materials. Though Martin admits many of her suitors were more focused on dating than design, she said the tactic did draw in some prospective clients. “It was worth the ridiculousness for that,” she says.

Conjure a Craigslist listing

Nowadays, Craigslist is a great destination for secondhand furniture and the occasional apartment listing. But 15 years ago it was how Dan Mazzarini forayed into residential design. “I was talking to a friend that I was helping with an apartment, and I think he said he had looked and posted for designers on Craigslist,” he says. “When I got home I took a look, and there were all these posts for people looking for weekend warrior kinds of designers. So I tried a few!”

Mazzarini would respond to ads looking for short-term projects—he says Trading Spaces influenced people’s desire for “quick fixes,” but the lack of modern technology made it trickier to DIY—and racked up some clients along the way. “I did help these roommates who lived in Harlem reupholster chairs,” he recalls. “They were in awe of how making the right decisions, and (a lot) of elbow grease totally changed their space. It was fun to work with them, and their gratitude was sincere.”

In addition to getting some clients, these smaller jobs taught Mazzarini important lessons like navigating a tight budget or timeline and communicating with vendors. (Translation? Everything he needed to build his firm, BHDM.) “My business has grown and evolved, but I still think there is no better reward than a happy residential client,” he says.