By Tara Duncan, with Host Haley Hinson Ishmael
Interior designers know that creating a beautiful space is only one part of a successful project. Behind every selection, installation, and finished room is a web of client expectations, vendor orders, contractor schedules, deadlines, budgets, and decisions that must reach the right people at the right time.
For Dixie and Paxton Willard, the mother-daughter team behind Poised & Plumb, helping designers manage that web has become the heart of their work.
Poised & Plumb focuses on the project workflows and operational systems that keep design projects moving from the initial discovery call through project closeout. The company helps designers document their processes, connect those processes with the tools and resources they need, and create systems that work with the way they naturally run their businesses.
Now, Poised & Plumb is joining the Design Society of America as a DSA partner, with Dixie and Paxton bringing their operations expertise to members through monthly educational features.
And if there is one idea they want designers to take away from their work, it is that better systems don’t have to mean more rigid systems.
From Interior Design to Operations
Poised & Plumb grew out of Dixie’s experience as an interior designer.
Dixie has worked in the industry for nearly 22 years, with experience ranging from e-design and furniture retail to architecture firms, new construction, renovations, and running her own design firm. She is also an NCIDQ and RIDQC-certified interior designer, educator, and operations strategist.
Over time, however, she discovered that she was particularly drawn to helping other designers figure out how to manage the many pieces surrounding their creative work.
After using project management software in her own design business, Dixie began helping other designers set up their systems. That eventually led to a position with a project management software company, where she spent several years working directly with designers and seeing the operational challenges they faced.
Paxton’s path was different but complementary. She grew up around the design industry, even tagging along to Dixie’s college classes as a child, before developing a background in customer service. She later joined the same software company and has now spent about five years working with designers, project management platforms, and different workflow approaches. She has also worked as a virtual assistant for designers.
When the software company was acquired, Dixie decided it was time to build something of her own. Rather than return solely to design, she wanted to continue helping designers solve the problems she had watched them encounter again and again.
Poised & Plumb was born, and Paxton soon joined her as an equal partner in the business.
When Everything Lives in Your Head
Dixie and Paxton had repeatedly watched projects derail when designers, contractors, and homeowners worked from different assumptions, and no one was “holding the middle” between them. They eventually noticed that design projects most often break down because of poor communication. A designer may know that everything is moving along perfectly well, but the client, contractor, or assistant doesn’t necessarily have that same information.
“It’s easy to be in your little bubble and know that everything’s going great but then forget to communicate to somebody else and they’re not caught up,” Paxton said.
The other problem is one familiar to many creative entrepreneurs: everything lives in the designer’s head. The designer knows where each project stands, who needs a call, what needs ordering, and what has to happen next. That system might work while juggling three projects. Add two more projects, an unexpected family situation, or a particularly busy week, and keeping track of everything mentally becomes much harder. Each interruption can also leave you trying to remember where you left off.
That is why Poised & Plumb focuses on getting those processes out of the designer’s head and into a system that can be followed, revisited, and eventually shared with a team.
The Right Information at the Right Time
Dixie describes a successful project workflow in a deceptively simple way: get the right information to the right person at the right time.
Think about a sofa selection. Which sofa was approved? Which fabric goes on it? Who needs that information? When does the order have to be placed? What is the lead time?
Those details may seem small individually, but together they determine whether a project stays on schedule.
“If you don’t order that sofa in time, you’re going to have a delay,” Dixie said.
The same principle applies to communication with clients. If something changes, communicating the delay early gives everyone a chance to adjust.
Paxton said proactive communication can also preserve trust even when nothing is wrong. If weeks pass without an update, clients may begin wondering what is happening. A simple check-in can reassure them that the project remains on track.
And when something has gone wrong, communicating early can keep a manageable problem from becoming a larger conflict.
When Your Systems Stop Working for You
Workflow doesn’t have to completely collapse before it needs attention. One warning sign, according to Paxton, is when running the business starts creating considerably more stress than enjoyment.
“If you’re doing more admin work than creativity, there may be some things that you can tweak to make more efficient so you enjoy your job more,” she said.
Dixie points to another clue: routinely working at times you don’t actually want to work.
If 10 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays are becoming the only opportunities to catch up, inefficient processes may be consuming more time than they should.
Strong operations can create room for growth, but growth doesn’t necessarily have to mean taking on more projects. Dixie noted that a designer might use that added capacity to grow from three projects to five — or continue handling three while reclaiming more time outside the business.
“It’s really the key to structuring your business the way that you want it to fit into your life,” she said.
Start With What You’re Doing Today
For designers who recognize themselves in all of this, Dixie and Paxton don’t recommend blocking off a week and attempting to document an entire business at once. Instead, they say to start writing things down.
“What did I do today? Well, I did these things,” Dixie explained. “Put it in a place you can find it, and when you get enough of them built up, you’ve got your process written down.”
You don’t even have to begin at the beginning of a project. Start wherever you are.
And “writing” doesn’t necessarily mean writing. Designers who process information better verbally can dictate notes using voice-to-text. Visual learners might record themselves completing a task. The important part is getting the process out of your head in a form you can actually use again.
Dixie prefers written instructions. Paxton is more comfortable learning certain processes visually. Rather than treating one as the “correct” method, they see themselves as an example of why systems need to account for how different people think and work.
When working with designers, they often begin with what Dixie calls a “skeleton framework” — the basic beginning, middle, and end that most projects share — and then build the designer’s own processes around it.
More Than One Way to Build a Better Business
Each month, Dixie and Paxton plan to focus on a particular part of the design business and offer several approaches for handling it. One month might explore different client personality types and ways to communicate with them; another might examine different methods for documenting processes. The best solution is rarely the one that ignores the person who has to live with it.
“There is more than one way to tackle the everyday things that happen in your business,” Dixie said.
For Poised & Plumb, the goal is to create enough structure to keep projects steady, communication clear, and details from slipping through the cracks while giving designers more space to do the creative work that brought them to the industry in the first place.
Look for Poised & Plumb’s monthly features in upcoming DSA communications, where Dixie and Paxton will continue breaking down the processes, systems, and everyday decisions behind a smoother design business.
