Sandra Deloya

I think one of my biggest successes is the longevity of my relationships with my clients. To me, it's all about how you make somebody feel, and they'll remember you for that. The fact that they continue to call me back - I have a client who I'm still working with, and my daughter's 20 years old and she held her when she was a baby. I have a lot of clients that I have known for at least a decade, a decade and a half, that are still calling me back whenever they have a project. My referral base is fantastic. All of my work is done based on referral, which I'm very fortunate for. I've got a very nice handful of beautiful projects that people are very happy with. The quality of my work is very good. If something goes wrong, I always take care of it, even if it's money out of my pocket. One big rule that I have, and I've always had in my life, is it's not what you say, it's how you say it. I think that's a very powerful thing, because everybody just wants to be treated with respect. And if you treat people with the same respect that you expect, then I think everybody's happy.

Don't do everything yourself. I hire people to do my renderings and my floor plans, and I also believe that you're also giving work to somebody else - you're sharing the wealth. Don't be afraid to ask, don't be embarrassed to ask. People are happy to share. They're happy to share their experience. Everybody has something for somebody. The young girls can teach us things, we can teach the young girls things. Don't be afraid. Ask for help. Ask questions. Say, hey, how did you do that? Who did you use for that? Ask to share resources. We like to share resources. Just explore, and go to your museums, and go to your design centers, and just poke around and see what's out there. Always look, always be curious, always be inquisitive, always shoot high, and what do they say? If you shoot for the moon, you'll get to the stars. So yeah, just don't be afraid to ask. Ask questions.

There are many challenges in the field supply issues, tariff issues - those are the things that I think are making things more difficult, and it's making it so that only a smaller amount of clientele is able to afford it. The cost of everything now is one of the biggest obstacles. I've been in this so long that I remember you can get a good quality sofa for a couple thousand dollars. That same good quality sofa is now $6,000. One of the other things that I'm sad to see is the longevity of things being made overseas, and the quality of things being made overseas that we've lost control over. There's definitely a quality difference. Our standards here in the U.S. are definitely different. So that's one of the things I'm really trying to focus on - having product that's made in the U.S. I just went to an ASID event last night that talked about the different chemicals that are in all of our paints and fabrics and finishes. I think that the design industry is going to be more focused on our health environment. Everybody's more aware of organic foods, and organic clothing, and organic fibers, and that trickles into the design industry as well. I think we should be more responsible about being aware of the chemicals that are in our mattresses, in our fabrics - you're not ingesting it, but your body absorbs those. One of the things that I think I want to focus on is product made in the U.S. with the certification of healthy products.