The Professional Podcast Network
11385 Nina Doiron-12 03 24-Interior Designer-Jon
Welcome to the Professional Podcast Network, where brilliance meets business. Elevate your brand and supercharge your revenue with inspiring insights and innovation. And welcome back to another episode from PPN. We bring you talk with interesting business people from all walks of life. I'm your host, John Starr, and up next we are talking with Nina Duarone. She is an interior designer, the owner of ISO Design and Interiors based in Barry, Ontario, Canada. Welcome Nina to our show today. Thank you, John. Thank you for having me here. Oh, thank you so much for being here, Nina. So tell us all about your design and interior business, how you got started, and what special did you have? Well, we are a full service design firm, a boutique design firm here located in Barry, Ontario. And what we offer are home appeal services. So, you know, when I share that with people that I need, what they tend to say, what does that mean? Home appeal services. So essentially, it is all types of services that help to improve your home appeal to all the stages of your home ownership. That includes to for you to live by adding beauty and function to your existing home or helping you to declutter and get organized so that you can find, you know, those missing spaces and then staging for when you, when you to sell as well, so it's a full service firm. That's fantastic. And how did you get started? What would you say was the, I guess, inspiration for you to follow this type of career path? Well, I was a corporate refugee. I was in the, my background is actually in corporate marketing. I was in corporate marketing for a number of years. And when I was downsize, I decided that it was the perfect timing for me to get into business on my own. And initially, I really focused on the staging side of the business because I found that it married well with my business background and my marketing background because staging is essentially a marketing tactic with when you are selling your home. Sure. That made sense for me. And then the business just morphed because when we staged the client then wanted us to come to their new home to help them design their new space. And so the business just morphed into the design aspect of the business as well. And because the design and staging business is very cyclical, I decided to introduce the home organization and move management service to the business to cover, like, the slower winter months. And staging can make such a big difference in the ability to make a home saleable. I mean, I have something of a real estate background myself and I know, yeah, how important that is. Would you say that there's a particular style or genre that you like to specialize in or maybe a particular type of clientele? Oh, well, no, in terms of staging, you know, our objective is to keep it neutral so that it appeals to a mass audience, right, because the more people we can bring into the home, the more tense is that the home is going to sell for top dollar and sell quickly. When it comes to the design aspect, our job is to be the guide, you know, I guide my clients because there's so many moving parts in a design or a redecorating project that sometimes the clients don't really know where to start or what to do. It's kind of like going to a restaurant with a very large menu. All it does is it confuses you, right? Right. You don't know what to order. Exactly. Yeah. So even when you look at colors, there are thousands and thousands of paint color choices and it's very hard to pick the right color and complementary color and so that's where we come in. We're the guide. We help to bring our clients design vision and aspirations to life. Does that make sense? Sure. Yeah, I'm sure there are many listeners who would like to consult you for your guidance. How can we reach out to you? You have good websites, social media links. What's a good way to come to work? Sure. Yes. So my website is icodesign.ca and you can also, I would love some followers to follow me on my Instagram and the Facebook page, which are my handle is I stage and design. So the letter N at the post the word N. All right. Fantastic. Well, Nina, I want to thank you so much for coming by today. It's a pleasure to talk with. I really enjoyed having you. I wish you the best with your interior design business going forward and then we wish you and your family a very happy holiday season. I hope you'll come back again sometime. Thank you. Thank you so much and thank you as well. All right. You take care. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye bye now. And to all our listeners, don't go away. We'll be right back after this short break. Welcome to the professional podcast network where brilliance meets business, elevate your brand and supercharge your revenue with inspiring insights and innovation. (upbeat music)