For Nathalia Interiors CEO and creative director, Nathalia Garrigan, her experience in designing spaces goes way beyond concepts for internal room layouts. Having a deep-rooted appreciation for the how and why of things led her to explore many different avenues of property design and construction throughout her career, and this multi-layered experience gave her a drive to build more harmonious relationships between sub contractors and designers. “After I graduated in interior design, I ran a remodeling company for someone, where I liaised with many contractors and designers. It was here I realized the many discrepancies in communication between the two,” Nathalia recalls. “A lot of the time, what you put on paper doesn’t necessarily translate in real life in terms of how it is installed or applied. I felt there were a lot of things lost in translation. So when I set up Nathalia Interiors eight years ago, my mission was to merge the two. Now with a successfully established design and build firm, many clients hire Nathalia for her ease in communicating with contractors. “Clients like that I can translate their design needs into the field,” she says. 

Here, Nathalia, and her colleague Pablo Gonzalez, share their valuable insight into bridging the communication gap and achieving a harmonious and successful project every time. 

Always ask questions

With so many variables and moving parts involved with each remodeling project, everyone connected has to be on the ball in order for it to be a success, checking and double checking details, keeping track of progress, and managing the budget. There are always lessons to be learned and built upon from each unique project, and fortunately this yearning to grow and learn comes naturally to Nathalia, who is always asking questions of her contractors and team to ensure the best possible outcome. “It pays to know how machinery and materials work. Take tiling, for example. It pays to know how a material is cut, why certain mosaics may not necessarily look how you drew them, or why certain applications where two materials meet won’t work as you intended. This is all valuable knowledge to have before working on designs,” says Nathalia. “I started out in construction before studying interior design, so it sort of worked backwards for me, and the fact I speak Spanish also helps me communicate with many subcontractors. Another thing that has helped me is my curious nature. I won’t necessarily take a contractor’s decision to simply widen a wall without knowing the why, the purpose or the material they are using. I want to know everything about it as this helps me understand the repercussions on materials and costsings.”

Build respect and you’ll get it back

Developing a good rapport with contractors can be pivotal in boosting productivity and high quality workmanship, as well as ensuring less delays and costs. The key to building respectful relationships is for both parties to clearly communicate their expectations and goals. Both parties' questions and concerns should be listened to and responded to respectfully. For Nathalia, visiting sites, sitting with contractors to get to know them on a personal level, and even demoing materials, has built a mutual respect between her and her contractors. “These guys are the experts in their particular field. I would never tell them how to install shiplap or a bespoke cabinet. I prefer to have a discussion about my ideas, see what they think and ask for their feedback. A lot of the time, the guys have been shy to speak up, however, the more I ask for their opinion, the more they realize I value their thoughts. It’s then that they’ve helped me perfect my designs,” she says. “For example, my carpenter will be the first one to pull me up on a cabinet layout that isn’t going to work or is going to cost too much because of the widths I’ve designed. These are the guys that save us money and keep us on track. People are more respectful of you when they know you want to learn from them, rather than coming in to simply boss them around. When you express respect, you receive respect.”

Being a reliable and efficient design firm that’s known for its strong contractor and supplier relationships will also gain you huge respect within the industry, enabling your business to flourish and maintain growth.  As COO of Nathalia Interiors, Pablo Gonzalez, believes one of their company’s biggest successes, as well as building great relationships, was to introduce Houzz Pro in order to streamline their operations and become a well-organized firm known for its methodical approach. “The selections tracker and selection boards have completely transformed the procurement side of our business, ensuring we are incredibly efficient when ordering and tracking deliveries, helping us avoid mistakes,” says Pablo. “If we didn’t have the software to track the hundreds of selections we need to make, we would have three procurement managers writing down everything on a notepad and transferring that to email to send to clients, paving the way for many mistakes. The inefficiencey would be huge. However, today we only need one procurement manager, making us big savings and ensuring considerably fewer mistakes.” 

Respect their autonomy 

It’s not only important to know your subcontractors on a personal level and value their expertise in their specific skills and experience, it’s vital to respect their autonomy to show them you appreciate their input and value their contribution. “Our contractors are given the power to make decisions,” says Pablo. “You don’t want contractors to worry they’ll get fired if they make decisions. It’s about empowering them, and making them understand we hired them for their expertise. We trust them to make a decision, and if it ends up being the wrong one, we’ll learn from it. Ultimately, giving people freedom to make decisions reduces the amount of conversations needed and avoids bottlenecks in the workflow.” 

There’s certainly plenty of goodwill within Nathalia Interiors, with many of the contractors having worked with her for years. “They are like friends now,” says Pablo. “Our carpenter, painter and electrician are at every project as they respect Nathalia, and in turn, we lean on them as they are the people we trust.” So how does the company maintain these strong relationships with their subs? By making sure they remember what is important to each and every one of them, explains Pablo. “Making a point to get to know them on a personal level is important, such as knowing their birthdays, how many kids they have, and their partner’s name. This is something we like to do, but it’s obviously easier when you have a smaller team.”

Nathalia believes using Houzz Pro has helped to foster these relationships and underpin them with trust and respect. “Using Houzz Pro has helped us all communicate better, as well as remove some time consuming responsibilities and tasks. Of course, software can’t solve all your issues if you don’t have well established personal relationships to start with. However, Houzz Pro has definitely helped smooth out an already good firm, helping us communicate in a much more efficient way where we are all on the same page.”

The Importance of good values

Instilling a set of shared values across your team and workforce, such as integrity, trust and respect, can enhance communication, foster relationships and serve as a moral compass no matter how big your company plans to grow. By continuing to maintain your business core values you’ll stand out from your counterparts with an enhanced reputation. 

For Nathalia and her team, their strategy is to scale the company while continuing to feel like a small business that cares for its employees. “We want to structure the business as we grow by replicating small teams throughout the organization, so we can maintain a close working relationship with everyone,” Nathalia says, who is relying on Houzz Pro to meet their goals as they grow bigger. “Something we really like about Houzz Pro is that the developers listen to our suggestions and opinions. Often, when we suggest a particular feature, the developers say they’ll work on it. We like that we are heard.”

As well as treating her employees with respect, Nathalia prioritizes client satisfaction and experience as she knows this is critical for any business’s success. “My theory is that there are a million designers out there and we cannot compete on talent. Therefore we have to compete on service, and I always want us to be at the very, very top,” says Nathalia. “One of the things clients have enjoyed about Houzz Pro is the ease of it. Most of them are busy running multimillion dollar companies, and therefore these people want quick responses. The text feature is brilliant as customers can approve products, comment on them and pay for them right there on their dashboard.”

Pablo also agrees that the software has been a game-changer for their customer relationships and business processes. “Houzz Pro can transform your business. It can make project management simpler, which in turn makes customer’s lives better. If you really want to grow and build a successful firm and live the life that your customers are living, then the only way to scale past that is to get software that’s going to make your life easier.”