The Strategic Hire: Utilizing Remote Support to Scale Your Studio with Reed Humphrey

Reed Humphrey did not set out to build a staffing platform for interior designers. He set out to solve a problem inside his own firm. When Alder & Tweed, his multi-office vacation home design firm, was hit with a surge of demand during COVID and couldn't hire fast enough, he flew to the Philippines, hired an HR person, asked her to find him the two best designers she could, and quietly ran an experiment inside two of his teams. It worked so well that five years later, his firm runs with 25 remote junior designers supporting his stateside staff, and they had a record year while operating with fewer local employees than at their peak.

That experiment became Dezign Assist. This conversation is the full breakdown of how it works, what it costs, and whether it might be right for your studio.

In this episode, we talk about:

-How Reed stumbled into the vacation home design niche out of necessity and built Alder & Tweed into a multi-office firm across Park City, Big Sky, and the Hudson Valley
-What the staffing wall felt like inside the firm during COVID and the specific problem he was trying to solve
-Who the Dezign Assist designers actually are, including the four-year degree requirement, four years of industry experience, and the annual accreditation testing that keeps their credentials current
-What day-to-day collaboration actually looks like across time zones, from Google Chat to weekly video calls to same-day deliverables waiting when seniors arrive in the morning
-Why Reed never replaced a stateside employee with a remote junior and how he thinks about the model as addition, not substitution
-How Dezign Assist pays above Philippine industry standard, provides entity-based employment with healthcare and social security, and maintains an HR team on the ground
-The kinds of tasks that are the best starting point for delegation and how to hand things off even if your processes are not fully buttoned up

We also get into what Reed is building toward with Dezign Assist's long-term platform vision.

If you have ever talked yourself out of getting help because you couldn't justify the cost of a full-time hire, this conversation is worth your full attention.

Learn more and get started at dezignassist.com/idco

About Reed Humphrey

Reed Humphrey is the co-founder of Alder & Tweed, a full-service residential interior design firm specializing in vacation home and second home design with offices in Park City, Big Sky, and the Hudson Valley, and the founder of Dezign Assist, the platform helping interior designers grow their team at a fraction of the cost.

Follow Dezign Assist

Website: dezignassist.com/idco
Instagram: @dezign.assist

About The Interior Collective

The Interior Collective is a podcast for interior designers focused on the business of design, covering pricing, operations, branding, marketing, and the real strategies behind running a successful studio.

Hosted by Anastasia Casey, founder of The Interior Collective, IDCO Studio, Kwin Made, and co-founder of Design Camp.

Видео The Strategic Hire: Utilizing Remote Support to Scale Your Studio with Reed Humphrey канала The Interior Collective