On this Friday’s episode of the Chaise Lounge, Nick is joined by Amy Storm of Designstorms to discuss her journey from Barbie Dreamhouse decorator to an entrepreneur with 10 employees designing all over the country out of Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

The Dreams

Amy Storm knew in high school that she wanted to be an interior designer, but she didn’t completely know what that entailed. Some of her college professors told her she didn’t know what she was getting into and needed to try something else. So she got into her school’s exclusive interior design program out of spite, where she was told she shouldn’t follow her heart into hospitality design because there weren’t any jobs in that area. Again, she sought out the designer behind some of her favorite Chicago-area restaurants and bugged him for a job. She moved on but was laid off. So she returned to bug him some more, convincing him to add a second designer on the cheap for a trial period to a firm that mostly staffed architects. She worked there for nine years after that.

Designstorms

She left after those nine years to have kids. But on Storm’s first day of motherhood, she got a call from a friend who needed a design eye, and she went right back to it, taking small gigs so that she wouldn’t need to be away for too long at one time. And her business grew from there. When her girls were old enough to be in school, she scaled up the projects she took and scaled up her team to match until she had her employees working around some folding tables in her bedroom.

Since then, Designstorms blossomed into a thriving business with a showroom, projects all over the United States and even an office with no bed in it.

To see the work Designstorms does, visit its website www.designstorms.com and check out its Instagram @designstorms.