The Commercial Design Crossover with Marcy Sagel

Hello and welcome to Designer Discussions with Jason and Miriam. Today our guest is Marcy Sagel. She is the principal and founder of MSA Interiors and Designer Bank, and we're here to talk about commercial interior design. Welcome to the Designer Discussions podcast with Jason, Maria, and Miriam.

Tune in each week where we talk about marketing PR and business advice for design professionals. Marcy, how are you doing today? I'm doing well. Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me on your show. We wanted to have you on because we have a lot of listeners in the residential design space. So we wanted to have you on to talk about that transition. So before we get into that conversation, if you could let our listeners know a little bit about who you are.

Sure. So I uh am a principal and founder of MSA Interiors. Um we have been doing commercial interior for over 25 years. Um we specialize in large-scale projects like multifamily, affordable housing, uh, student housing, senior housing, hospitals, and stadiums, uh, just to say a few things, but very large-scale projects.

That's it. And uh I'm sorry, Jason. No, no, go ahead. And Designer Bank uh is uh my other company, which is a training platform for designers that may want to learn how to work in the commercial interior design area.

Now, before I over talk to you, so that that's actually interesting about the commercial side, because like I said, we actually have a lot of residential design listeners, and I've been approached locally about what that transition looks like. From now on, whenever I have that, I'll be able to reference this episode. So, you know, talk to our listeners about what that transition looks like. And if you actually have a degree, how do you transition over to commercial?

Mm-hmm. So when people come out of school and they, if they go to an accredited school, for example, or let's say they go to a community college for interior design, and they then go to an additional four-year program to get that bachelor's degree. Um, it's never strictly geared towards commercial design. So it's more of an all-over purpose of interior design.

Some schools have a commercial design program, but most of them are sort of all incorporated into one. So you come out of there and you may just want to focus on residential, which a lot of people love to do, which is pretty much how we get into uh interior design in the first place. We have a love of interiors. And for me, I've had it since I was a very young girl, um, where my mother had an interior designer, and I'm the only daughter I got to work with her and help make those decisions.

So that is where I got my love and interest from a very early age. So, but it's very difficult when you come out of a university and you've studied design and you need to make that transition into commercial. Most commercial firms, they don't want to take a chance on someone because there's too many things to know and you may not be accredited yet, but you really need to get experience before you can get that accreditation. So that transition is very difficult.

And so, over the years, even if someone had had a lot of experience in commercial design, they didn't really have the experience that we have. So in the past, uh obviously everyone used to handraft and then it went to CAD, okay, which and we always work in whatever architects work in in commercial design. And now in commercial design, the majority of the architecture firms, and I would say very large majority of them, large-scale architecture firms that we work with work in uh Revit.

So that meant that we had to make the transition into Revit. And Revit is expensive. By the way, you can download a free trial for 30 days. So I recommend anybody to try it.

Um, so we had to make that transition, and it's a big investment. So for a firm, it's a big investment. Individually, it's less of a big investment. So not only did we have to uh get everyone to be on Revit, but we had to teach everybody Revit.

And Revit is one of those programs that's incredibly difficult, has so many layers to it. It was built really for architects, but we use it as interior designers. And as interior designers, we work in that program differently than architects do. Okay.

So we're typically working in an architectural model, and that can have a whole lot of conversation around it. So after a while, we got we were hiring people online, we brought people in in person, and we just really felt that no one really understood the way that we work on these large-scale projects. So we started training people in-house, okay, and that took years. And we also spent probably 11 or 12 years building our own library, which is a very big part of using Revit.

So we have had someone here the entire time working on building that library. Uh, basically, all of our designers would say, I need a light fixture that looks like this, or I need a piece of furniture that looks like this. And um and our in-house person would do what's called a parametric family of items. So this training for us took years to get to the level that we're at.

And we typically only hire people that have Rabbit experience now because our jobs are too large and they really require people that have a lot of expertise. But if you want to get into that whole area of using uh or getting into the commercial realm, what we recommend is my other company is, and I'm not trying to plug it, I'm just trying to say, we created modules for people to learn that are inexpensive, that they can download the free trial and basically get educated on how to use it like an interior designer.

Okay. So we created Revit training, and there's like a level one, a level two, and a level three. And then we also do all of our own in-house renderings. So that has become another skill set that designers, I feel, really need to learn on any level.

Anytime you can do a rendering of a project and make your presentations look better and give any of the customers or clientele that you have a better understanding of how something looks. Because remember, we're creative, we're visual, they're not. Not everybody else can see or interpret what we interpret. And so when you can do a rendering of something, it really helps somebody understand what direction you're sort of going in and how to get there.

And they can get there faster if they can see it. They always say things like, you know, I'm really I am having a hard time figuring out what this is gonna look like. Well, if you can show them what it's gonna look like, it really helps them to understand that. And so basically, we are training people in Designer Bank how to do what we do in my commercial design firm.

So, and again, you don't have to want to get into commercial interior design to learn any of these programs. Any of these programs are gonna help you as a residential designer or a commercial designer. So even if you just learn how to render, okay, that's gonna help your presentation materials in a very, very large way. Any capacity, okay?

And if you can make these presentations look better and more visual, you're gonna win over your client every single time. So that's that's how we kind of invented designer bank. Okay. So with designer bank, you said you have the different levels.

Typically, how long does it take a designer to learn each of these levels? If they have a full-time job, they're doing this after hours, how long does it take? That's a great question. So each of the like program modules are 30 minutes apiece.

And the reason they are is it's too much information to take on more than 30 minutes. It's just there's no way you're gonna remember that. And each one comes with a workbook that you can go back to and look at all of the details and the information and really kind of grasp it. And it also comes with the tips and tricks because, as we all know, every software program should have tips and tricks because we all know that there are tips and tricks with everything from Excel to Word to PowerPoint.

If we all knew all of them, we'd be like geniuses. So it really helps to get that sort of shortcut tips and tricks. So um that's what we did. Um, we are talking to many universities about it because it offers a lot of things that you can't learn until you're actually working in the field.

And so that's really where we differentiate ourselves from everyone else. Um, but I think everything that we teach, and we've only launched 13 modules to begin with. We have another 30 that we're going to be launching because we just started this. So we have uh done a lot of filming and a lot of uh writing um to kind of really compact these with as much information as you can possibly compact.

And really, it's an open education for anyone. And here's what I tell people we deal with a lot of recruiting firms. And over the years, they've tried to have us have people without Revit, and that just doesn't really work with what we do. So, what I tell them is go out and tell them to get Revit training.

They have a great portfolio, but they have to learn how to work in Revit. If they work in Revit, I would consider hiring them, you know, but they have to get some level of proficiency in Revit. Um, and that's not the case with all firms, by the way. It just happens to be the case with our firm because again, we have to work in whatever model the architect's working in, and all of our architecture firms that we've been working with nationwide, they're all working in Revit.

So that's that's why we did what we did. And um, you know, I also think the recruiters have said if you have Revit proficiency, they have a better opportunity of placing you. There's more firms out there. They can place you in an architecture firm, they can place you in an interior design firm, in a larger scale interior design firm.

And the increase of salary is between $15,000 and $30,000 if you learn Revit. So that's like a really big factor. And uh if you chat GPT that, you'll find out exactly that. You know, you can uh put it in AI and it'll tell you if you know this program, you have a much better opportunity of getting a job because it opens up so many more opportunities for you.

So that's something also, you know, also to consider. And I didn't know that actually. The recruitment firm tells me that. And then I looked it up back, you know, I went back and looked it up, and yes, in fact, that is the case.

So how many modules could you say do you have uh the 13 now you're gonna be adding uh over? Thirty more. So how many modules will they need to learn before you can say they're proficient? So if you just do the vertical of Revit, which is level one, which is like a beginner, and we have a level two, which is kind of a bit of a more you know moderate, you know, intermediate.

And then we have a little bit of what I call a pre-advanced, okay? Um, if you did two to three of the modules um in Revit, you're gonna get yourself a really good basic and you'll be able to learn anything that you need to learn to work in Revit at that point for sure. Um, same with uh our rendering, which is in NScape. Um, if you do multiple levels of this, you'll learn different techniques.

You'll learn how to light it, you'll learn how to shade it, you'll learn how to add all kinds of little nuances to the renderings, which take it from a very bland and basic to how do you light it, how do you add features to it, um, and and going through all of those different things to make sure that you know how to do that. Again, both of those skill sets will help you get a job. Even if you don't have an accredited degree, even if you don't have everything that you need, a bachelor's, or even if you know those two programs, you're gonna help yourself get a job in the industry because lots and lots of firms hire people just to do rendering or just to do production work in rendering, I'm sorry, in Revit.

So if you take either one of those or both of those, you're gonna give yourself an additional layer of an opportunity to get a job. Okay. Okay. So what I'm hearing that honestly, if you take a weekend, maybe two or three weekends, you could really become proficient at that.

It takes practice. Um, you have to keep using it and learn all the nuances of the program to get really good at it. And you know, you can get something done. It's just gonna at the beginning, it always takes you longer, and then as you use it, you move through it faster, and then it becomes much more proficient.

So now talking about the practice, we use Ribbit in our firm, and w one of the issues we have is it's always you always gotta upgrade with the newest version. So, how do you compati that in terms of the learning where you may teach on one version, but then a year or two later it's a new version where they moved around of the twos, and how do you handle it? So we have uh many different architectural firms that work in different year models, okay? And when we start a project, we ask them what year are you working in?

And uh they go back from 2018 to 2026. I mean, that's the range. So we update always, we're always updated here at our firm at MSA. But um, what we do uh recommend is that um, regardless of what year you learn it, you can download a free trial at any point, okay, of the latest and most current version of it.

Okay. And they do always have nuances, as we know. It's like any software, you just even on your phone, you cringe every year that something new comes out because you know it's gonna mess up whatever you've already learned. So it just takes a little bit of time to get comfortable again.

And I say, you know, those are those are sort of the things that happen in in the different Revit models. Like there's nuances to it. Some are good, some are not so good. You know, they're gonna clear those out in the next year, and then they're gonna upgrade it again.

And by the time you learn it, the next year models out. Um and then we do uh one of our other three verticals that we're doing is space planning, large-scale space planning. And I think space planning is one of those things where it's overwhelming, like residential or commercial. The bigger it is, the harder it is.

And so you have to learn how to break that large-scale space down into blocks and kind of like block it out. And our space planning module shows you how to do that. And that's again a beginner level, an intermediate level, and an advanced level. And uh it shows you different techniques to do those large-scale space planning.

So, again, great thing for anyone to know between residential or commercial. And this is where I think why we came out with these modules initially, rather than some other ones, like parametric families and those that we will be coming out with. We wanted to come out of the gate with the ones that I felt across the board would be good for both residential and commercial designers. Talking about the differences working with the commercial over residential outside of technology.

What are the major differences, benefits, and negatives for working on the commercial side versus the residential side? So I love residential design. I mean, literally love it. Okay.

I love doing someone's home, and you get to have that personality that belongs to the people that you're working for. You really can listen to what the architecture is, you know, and and really feel how they want their home to be as a residential. In commercial, we uh work with large development firms in multifamily and affordable housing, student housing. So very large clients, um, teams of people, okay, very large teams of people.

So we have, we start out the project and we have um the architecture team, and they have a whole assortment of people on their team, okay, at all different levels. And then they have what's called the project manager. Uh, every architectural group has a project manager on every project and uh lead architect, junior architects, whole team of architects doing different things. Then we have the engineers, and then we have whoever the engineering firm is that happens to be hired, and then we have um, you know, all of the subs, I call it.

Um, you know, who's the general contractor, who's, you know, who's going to be representing the client in a large team and making decisions, who's the decision makers, who's your day-to-day contact person. Very large teams of people, unlike residential. And residential does have teams, architect, sometimes, you know, um, depending on how large the project is. But the scale of the project uh starts, and typically what we do is we have a discussion about who's responsible for what.

And so we make a list of who's responsible for what, um, so there's no confusion and no overlap. Um, and we divide it up that way, and then we set up a series obviously of calls and check-ins where we start moving and we create a schedule. And so that schedule typically could be a minimum of 18 months for the kind. Our projects are typically three years, okay?

So I just want to say that up front. Could be longer, okay? But when we do large apartment buildings or student housing or military housing or whatever it is we could be working on, you know, some of them can go five to seven years, okay, depending on how many phases are involved. So we start out with a plan, we start out with a schedule, and then we work very heavily to a schedule.

Um, and then we have these calls, usually bi-weekly, with everyone that's involved on the project, and they give an agenda so we know when it's our turn to have a conversation. And someone on our team as a project manager is always listening in on the rest of the call and uh hearing the rest of all of the groups talk about their different areas of interest, uh, just in case there might be some notes involving us. But um it's involved and it takes a lot of time and process, and that's just the design portion of it, okay?

Then we get into, you know, we do um there's different phases of commercial design. So we typically have what's called a uh schematic at the beginning and uh large-scale space planning. So we would, if there's a group that will be managing the management or leaseup of a building, we get them involved early on and we get a list of what their um what their areas uh are that they might want to have square footage-wise. So for instance, the fitness, they might want a very large fitness area, let's say 3,000 plus area or larger.

Uh how many offices for their leaseup, how many back of house offices, what do they need? They need a maintenance area, they need garage areas, they need uh places for dogs to be washed. We sort of figure out what the amenities might be for those space planning early on, and then we give them a lot of different options. So uh we we do the space planning really early because we have to, because the architecture is moving ahead, and we have to figure out all of the engineering and columns and um code issues early on.

So we move it along that process with the space planning, everybody being on board. Then we can determine the ceiling and the connection, the heights, all of those things, stairs, elevators, all of that based upon the location of the front of the building where the sun's coming in, you know, how how's it going to be featured? And there's so many elements involved. And so we're all working together to create that lovely space planning.

And at the same time, we're doing um, you know, inspirations. Um, and we like to take those inspirations and move them into, and it shows when we do the uh inspiration mod, you know, the space planning module. We like to get creative with it and come up with uh names and words that kind of reflect the direction that we're going in. So we work with that, trying to be really creative, color options, um, different directions, and we look at it based on who their competitors are all around them.

So if you look at an apartment building and you have, let's say, 10 apartment buildings nearby within like a couple mile radius, we look at their amenity list, we look at their colors, we look at their direction, we look at their style. You know, are they craftsmen? Are they art deco? Are they, you know, modern and you know, are they sort of warm and friendly, you know, transitional?

All of that. And we give a whole board of all their competitors so that we can pick a direction that we feel not only the architecture is already going in, but where the inside needs to go in based on the competitors and what they have, and also the level of the price of uh the rents. What are some of the negatives or working on the commercial side versus the residential cell? Yeah.

So as I said, large-scale group of people making decisions. That's always not fun. Um, and if you have really experienced people from the development side, and most of the time we do, we're at that level where we work with very experienced people, they have a really good idea of how to make decisions. And um, we have to remember the project is not our own personal money and project.

Okay. We work for the developer, and the goal is to get the fastest lease up and make this building look as good as we can for the dollars. And now, of course, everything is value engineered because everything is overpriced with construction. So everybody's value engineering every aspect of a project.

So we still have to get it to the finish line looking good, but not costing a fortune. So, you know, there's a lot of nuances in that, and you have to really know products in order to value engineer and get it to look good for less money. So it's educating yourself on product and different types of products and how much they cost. So when we present products to our clients, we actually show them.

Like if we're doing tile, we might say this tile is $2 a square foot, this tile is $4 a square foot, this tile is $8 a square foot. And that is the cost that the contractor would be buying it for with some kind of level of markup to the contractor because they all have uh an agreement of, let's say, whatever that person, that cost plus agreement uh in how they purchase materials. And that way the developer who's making the final decision or the owner can say, Well, I love the $2 tile.

Why are we gonna go with the $10 tile? I like the $2 even better. But they're actually making the decision based on price right up front. So we don't have to redesign the whole project at the end to value engineer it.

So we do that bang for the buck right up front. So we do wall finishes and wallpaper and all kinds of murals and whatever we're gonna do. Um, we can let them know how much those things are costing while they're making the decisions. So, you know, in fact, they already know that that's the direction they want to go in and they know the price is gonna be within their guideline.

Okay. So now at the start, you list a number of the project types that you work on. What is your favorite type of project to work on and why? So I love many different I love many different types of projects because I like the variety.

Okay. Um, I like the creative variety. Um, and for us, every single job is different from the next. We have no portfolio that looks identical from piece to piece, okay?

And there's a reason for that. Every architect comes up with a new solution for each new build that we work on. And so they all look different. They're all in different marketplaces around the country.

They have a different audience. So we are working towards a specific market audience. And for me, the best is how fast can we get it leased up? The faster we lease up a building, the more excited I get.

And for us, we are only as good as our last job. We have a lot of repeat clients. And the reason we have repeat clients is because we do get a really great lease up and we stick to budget. We never go over budget.

Very, very key. And we also are always on time with every project. We we never extend out, we always follow the schedule of the architect and the general contractor. And it's very important to do that because every minute that you're late with delivering a project means the whole ex the whole building can push out for that.

And so we don't certainly want to be the cause for that. I don't think we'd ever be hired again if we did that. So um I just love pretty much every project we work on um creatively. So they're all very creative.

They have a lot of really unique indoor and outdoor spaces, and that makes each project exciting for me. Yeah, no, I think this is all so interesting because we normally deal with so many um firms in the residential space, and it's definitely very different. And I just want to kind of bring it back to um what we normally talk about, which is marketing and PR. And for me, on the PR side, I know obviously there's a quite different set of media that um deals with commercial design projects compared to um residential design products.

It's all trade press for the most part, right? Unless for some super fancy maybe um restaurant hotel type properties. But I just wonder um if you have any insights on if somebody is interested in transitioning or like bringing in some commercial projects, like how what would be the best way to go about that if on the marketing side? And I know you're already so established, you know, you probably don't have to do that.

But if you had to give advice to somebody who's starting out in commercial, what would you say? If someone was starting out, or let's say they're in uh residential and want to start taking on some commercial jobs, which is very likely, by the way, because when you're good at doing residential interior design, that same client that may own a company that you've just done their home for wants to work with you. Okay. They think you're creative, they love your style, they want to see their commercial project be just as good as their residential project.

And by the way, I was doing residential and transition to commercial. And I had a mentor, and I highly recommend that for anybody. Um, if they're transitioning and want to add some commercial projects. But if you're talking about the marketing portion of it, I think with social media and marketing now and all that we have that's out there, you've got to get out there and talk about what you're good at.

Even though if it might feel difficult, I'm not comfortable doing that, to be honest. I know this profession and I feel really good about it, but it's not easy for me to talk about, oh, we're really good at this or we're really good at that. But you have to start doing that from a marketing standpoint and a PR standpoint. And if it if you want to start small, start doing some local radio, start doing some local podcast, get your name out there and really start getting involved with some marketing that's more regional and local to where your area is, and get a name for yourself.

Start building that up for yourself and remember that every single client, whether they're easy or difficult, is a possibility of you getting additional clients from that client. And you have to remember that's your best marketing up front is every client you work with, and go on from there. So, you know, really try to wrap up a project, even if it's the most difficult project, wrap it up as best as you can and um realize that you learn something from it and market it. Use it for your marketing materials, use it for your portfolio to get other jobs, and and really just start to put some, you know, websites together that really showcase your portfolio and letting people understand who you are.

You know, get some search engine optimization, get somebody out there to do all of your marketing and really push out there what you do. Because as I always said, my mom used to say this actually no one's just gonna come and knock on your door and say, Oh, can I hire you? Okay. No, you have to actually go out there and ask for work.

And the way you do that is by marketing yourself. So that's my best recommendation with marketing. Very true. I love that.

And the local regional angle is something that we always preach um to all of the students and the clients that we work with. So yeah, yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah.

It's all so interesting. I really hope that some of our listeners are gonna um take um some of the advice that that you're giving them and and start um expanding. I hope so because there's so many creative designers that are in the residential field and they, you know, sometimes feel stuck. That's what I hear.

They're stuck in the residential arena. But some of the best designers I know started out in residential and they're doing monster hotels and major restaurants and major large commercial projects because nobody just comes out of school unless you get your accreditation right away and gets like the best job out there. It takes time. So if you're gonna expand your portfolio, it's not hard to do with a lot of the people that you already have as clients for residential clients.

You can really expand on that and start doing some of their commercial spaces. You know, you might have a doctor that you did their home and they may want you to work on their, you know, doctor's practice, you know, or help them fix up their office. All of these things help build your commercial portfolio. Awesome.

So, one question I like to ask all designers that we have on here, uh, and you've answered aspects of this, you know, throughout, but the younger Marcy, if you were talking to her right now and she was in residential, what advice would you hand her? So I was always afraid to take that leap into commercial. I felt like I was never gonna know enough to go into that commercial realm. And I had a client that hired us to do all of the red lines for all of his multifamily buildings uh for the units uh because of cabinetry, okay, for the kitchens and bathrooms.

And um, he was an architect, he was a big public company, and he guided me through everything I needed to learn to work on my first multifamily job, and it was a lot. And I told him right up front, this is not something I know how to do. And he said, I love your creativity. I want to work with you and show you how to do this.

That's all it takes. And anybody is out there, you know, in the industry, there's plenty of people that will help guide you. Don't be afraid to ask someone that's in commercial or or working for a firm to help guide you if you get a job in a commercial uh directive or or want to learn more about it. There's lots of people willing to give advice architects, interior designers that are in the commercial area.

So that's what I suggest. I love that. I love that. So if any of our listeners want to reach out to you, how do they do so?

Um, I could always be reached through uh either of my websites. Um, I have my email on both. Feel free on Marcy at Msainteriors.com or Marcy and it's M A R C Y at designerbank.

com. So happy to answer any questions anyone has. Thanks again, Marcy. And for all of our listeners, if you want to reach out to her, please do so.

So uh we hope to hear and see you all in two weeks here on Designer Discussions. Thank you so much for having me. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Designer Discussions and all of the helpful information. Subscribe to our podcast, leave us a review, and share it with your friends.

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