What's the secret to building an award-winning interior design company while caring for three children (one with special needs) and going to school at the same time?
“Late nights,” said Janelle Blakely Photopoulos, owner of Blakely Interior Design.
Despite not getting a lot of sleep, a life creating pleasing, functional interior spaces for her clients has been her dream – and it’s one she’d already been living.
With her company hitting its stride earlier than she’d anticipated, it made for busier times sooner than expected.
Photopoulos already had clients when she decided to seek a more formal education in design. It all began when she bought, as she calls it, “the ugly house on the street,” and transformed it. Word of her work got out, and suddenly she had projects underway.
But even with a knack for color, fabrics, furniture and accessories, she still decided the Rhode Island School of Design Interior Design Certificate Program would give her that core, foundational knowledge that would add to her competitive edge.
“I needed to learn the technical aspects – to earn my stripes, if you will. It did mean a lot of … late nights. I sacrificed sleep more than anything else,” she said.
At the time Photopoulos entered the RISD program, in 2011, her younger son was a baby, her daughter was a toddler and her other son was 5.
Since then, she has earned awards from interior design website Houzz for the last five years in a row, and from the Rhode Island Home Show. So, her kids – now age 12, 10 and 7 – are old enough to see her hard work paying off. Their mom’s company also won a Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses entrepreneurial program’s Revenue Growth Award – increasing its numbers by 187 percent over a six-month period in 2016.
The 7-year-old Blakely Interior Design now has a staff of five working in its renovated space at the Lafayette Mill in North Kingstown. Though the firm serves mainly residential clients, it also does commercial work, having designed South Kingstown’s Matunuck Oyster Bar and Flawless Medical Spa in East Greenwich.
Photopoulos has a bachelor’s degree in marketing and management from Syracuse University in New York and is from a corporate background. She was a marketing manager for AT&T for many years. Home design and décor overhauls are similar to major marketing campaigns in that they involve project management, documentation and communication, she said – all of which she learned in corporate America.
She also learned the skill of “developing a rock star team” and keeping those team members motivated.
Offering an internship program at Blakely is one of those initiatives. The design firm has hosted marketing and design interns from the University of Rhode Island, New England Institute of Technology, Rhode Island College and RISD.
“It’s rewarding to … watch them develop,” Photopoulos said. The design firm has also taken on a senior from Rocky Hill School as part of its work-immersion program.
Another project that Blakely Interior Design put into motion this past year was a Facebook video series, Design Dish, offering weekly design advice. The episodes offer information and education to the general public and exposure for local vendors and artisans.
The company found another way to give back this past year by launching Blakely Gives Back, the firm’s philanthropic arm. As part of this effort, it leads the Rhode Island chapter of Savvy Giving by Design, a nonprofit that transforms bedrooms of children with medical issues at no cost to the family.
It’s a cause that resonated with Photopoulos as a perfect way to help make a difference.
“I’m a firm believer that the environment you live in greatly impacts your mental health, your ability to heal,” she said. “It’s important from more than just a general design perspective.
“For children, their bedrooms are their oasis,” she continued. “They can often spend more time in their bedrooms than in hospitals, as they have to get their blood-cell count to a certain level,” while undergoing treatments, she said. Replacing old carpets that may carry pathogens with new flooring is another example of the benefit that redesign offers to ill children.
As Photopoulos offers design services, work internships and room revamps for sick children, it remains a core value of her design firm to pamper its clients. Her team knows that moving furniture, painting walls and installing floor treatments is disruptive for clients, and works to make it as stress-free as possible.
Another thing she has learned along the way is the idea of work-life balance for women like her isn’t realistic.
“Any female entrepreneur that goes out looking for a state of balance? It doesn’t really exist,” she said. “I think of it as buckets. Your areas of priority are like buckets. You fill them up as best you can. If I had important deadlines, I’d focus on that bucket. But once those deadlines were met, I’d dedicate time to the others.”
