Episode 000: What is The E-Design Experience, What is The Design Influence, and Who is Albie Knows
Hello beautiful people & welcome to The Design Influence.
I am your hostess with the mostest, online interior designer, content creator, and non stop idea machine, Albie of Albie Knows Online Interior Design & Styling.
When I’m not tinkering with new software or conjuring up new designs, I am getting used to living on the west coast, ordering way too much from Amazon, chasing my thriving threenager, or binge watching Netflix originals with my husband…all with a luke warm cup of Bustelo coffee in my hand.
The E-Design Experience started as a passion project in 2018 after going to my first High Point Market.
I’d always secretly wondered to myself, “why isn’t there a community to designers like me?” — a space that was exclusively catering to the needs of online designers; because, while e-design would come up in conversations, it was always more as a footnote, not the main story. What I found to be the most confusing part of this was that I knew I wasn’t the only designer doing e-design exclusively, yet where was our little corner of the inter webs?
I plopped the idea on my Trello board but never gave it much thought…not until that first trip to High Point, where I sat alongside other designers discussing the business of e-design. After speaking on the e-design panel a few things hit me —
a lot of designers were interested in e-design, whether it was to start or to get better
a lot of designers had the same e-design questions & concerns, and needed a place to get answers
By the end of my day at market, I’d said aloud that I’d love to host a conference for e-designers, and that week The E-Design Experience was born! Two months later, the virtual beta for the conference launched and The E-Design Experience has continued to grow & evolve ever since!
While intended to be a dedicated space for the online designer, I quickly realized it wasn’t just about designing online — it was about helping designers be better in this new digital landscape, so that meant not online being a better online designer but being a better online entrepreneur.
So many of you that I met through the conference & everything thereafter, shared your journey with me, and it was evident that every single one of you was a super talented designer — give you a paint deck & some floor plans, and you could make magic! But where most of you were less than magical was really at being an entrepreneur — everything from systemizing your business to wrapping your head around being the boss of everything.
For months, I wanted to talk to all of you about all these things & more, but needed to figure out how — private community, Instagram lives, weekly emails…after much mulling over, here we are — The Design Influence!
The Design Influence is all about you, the designpreneur.
The show dedicated to changing the conversation & creating impact — on & offline. I wanted it to be a place where it wasn’t more of the same, and instead, candid (and caffeinated) conversations about everything from growing pains as an entrepreneur to decoding design tools to figuring out what the heck it means to be an influencer!?
Yes, we will be talking about topics curated for the online designer, but let’s be honest — there’s no sense excelling in design if you’re not also excelling as an entrepreneur.
Now I’m going to let you on a not so secret secret — interior design isn’t my first career.
I went to school for architecture but made my first of a lifetime of pivots, graduating with a degree in advertising & public relations, with a minor in psychology. I took my degree and jumped right into entrepreneurship — rather than waiting around for a job — doing freelance entertainment PR, alongside running an entertainment & lifestyle blog (a blog that, in hindsight, I wished I’d kept around now that blogging is all the rage).
While I’d always worked in retail merchandising part-time during college, getting my NYC apartment was really the catalyst for hanging up my entrepreneur hat to pursue a more stable career (and income) in visual merchandising full-time. And fast forward 4 years, that same apartment would also be the catalyst for my pivot into interior design, as I now had a husband & daughter to fit into my former bachelorette pad.
After a sudden cross country move, from NY to WA, I decided to take my business seriously — ditching 3rd party platforms to pursue my own clients, my own projects, and do this whole design thing my own way. That was nearly three years ago!
I’ve since had a lot of highs & a lot of lows, and my fair share of hits & misses. Everyday is a new lesson to be learned, but I wouldn’t trade it in for the world.
I’ve done campaigns with major brands, hosted industry events, shared my story on numerous podcasts, and booked projects that once upon a time, I could only dream of.
My designpreneur journey — wins, losses, and all — doesn’t make me an expert, as much as it makes me someone who gets you.
The evolution of The E-Design Experience is also the evolution of Albie Knows, and as someone in the trenches with you, I know what I’m talking about — most days at least. The days I don’t, some of my fav online friends will come hang with me and chat with you too.
I get you, so I want to talk to you, I want to answer your questions, and I want to help you quiet the noise, because while I may not have all the answers, I know how & where to find em.
Never did I ever imagine creating a platform & community for designers, but I am excited to take this ride with all of you, sharing what I’ve learned & what I know along the way.
I hope you’ll subscribe to join me every week for The Design Influence. Be sure to let me know what you think with with a rating & review, and share the show with your design bestie, so we can all hang out.
You can also follow The Design Influence on both Instagram & Facebook to keep the conversation going. And if you just really like me, you can come hang with me too at Albie Knows.
Talk to you soon!
Today’s episode is brought to you by Gather.
Gather is a visual platform that helps you source product, communicate with clients, and eliminate hours of admin headaches. Head over to thedesigninfluence.com/gather to get started with a free extended trial, and to start treating your business better.
