'Some of the most unpleasant decisions of the last several months were actually the easiest, because when there is an urgent problem, our action is always driven by integrity."
Robin Burrill is formally educated in interior design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of North Texas. She provides hands-on guidance to clients in interior design and design-build remodel projects. She joined her husband’s remodeling business as an interior designer over 20 years ago. They believe the home is more than an investment, and they educate clients about the “return on enjoyment” of selections and designs in their projects.
Robin is a member of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID), a Registered Interior Designer with the State of Texas, has her Certified Aging in Place (CAPS) designation and is a member of the Interior Design Society (IDS) and is NCIDQ Certified.
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Table of Contents
We’re grateful for your time today, thank you for joining us! Share your story with us.
Robin Burrill: I joined my husband, Rob, at his remodeling firm over 20 years ago. Since then, we’ve grown the business from a design-build remodeling company relying on multiple subcontractors to a white-glove, full service concierge for everything design and maintenance-related in the home. This means we lead clients through our Signature Process to take care of their every need through a design-build remodel. We also provide interior design and handyman services.
But it’s not all about business, is it?
My personal journey has one recurring theme that can’t go without mention: cancer. After diagnosis with breast cancer almost a decade ago, everything changed. Facing my own mortality was just the start of it. I came out having reassessed everything I value and everything I want to do with the time I have left. I’m so fortunate that I have been cancer free since treatment, but the battle with cancer didn’t stop there. My mother was diagnosed with cancer about a year after I was, and then later my dad. Now my values are crystal clear, they couldn’t be any clearer: I will do whatever I commit to, I will take full advantage of my time here, and I will continue to learn and connect with people without any fear or hesitation. I will be relentless in doing what I love!
Some say leadership is innate, others would argue against it. Would you say you were born a leader or did you have to become a leader? Explain your experience and viewpoint.
Robin Burrill: I definitely wasn’t a born leader. I was born opinionated! I was born to get things done! I do have passion and I do have talent. Leading people is different than managing them, though, and I can’t stand “spoon feeding” or “babysitting” the people I delegate to. This means that the only tool left to me is true leadership…inspiring people to be their best selves, to use the tools they have, to find their own answers, to pine to get to the same place I want us to go.
The best decision I’ve made in business in recent years has been to hire the right people as the team grows. I am an imperfect leader, I am still learning. What has helped me grow has been hiring the people who WANT to be led. I hired people with passion as well as talent. A sense of accountability helped, too. I’ve grown as they have, and it’s this mutual experience that has helped me as a leader and mentor of our team.
Tell us about your company/Organization. What are some of the most exciting projects that you’re working on and how does your organization distinguish itself from the rest?
Robin Burrill: What we are is a full-service design-build firm. The clients who come to us are those who don’t want to play “project manager.” They don’t want to schedule their own subcontractors, take care of their own materials and selections, wait on deliveries and manage a calendar of to-dos. They come to us with a vision—the most abstract thing in the world. They struggle sometimes to describe their dream, their ideal outcome…but we have a process to extract that idea and turn it into a design they can truly experience.
The first look at new designs comes in 3D renderings. Then we detail the project and all its moving parts in the most comprehensive contract and proposal I’ve seen in the industry. They love us at the permit office, too! They know they can always count on us to bring the best and most detailed information. We think of everything before it happens, and our clients are able to sit back and enjoy the ride.
Remodels are still dusty, noisy, and—right now, with the logistics challenges—lengthy. But we work with our clients to keep them as comfortable as possible, as well as informed. They hire us because they know things will always be taken care of, even when the inevitable surprises do pop up.
Throughout your career, have you been a team player or a lone wolf? How did that benefit or handicap you throughout the years?
Robin Burrill: I’ve been a team player ever since our company started to grow, but in the past I was a bit of a lone wolf when it came to interior design. I was the only interior designer, after all! I would be doing everything from selections and proposals to cleaning the toilet at a finished remodel the day of a photoshoot…but that was only out of necessity.
As we started to grow, I became extremely comfortable delegating things to other designers and employees. What did take me some time to get use to was delegating things and either having to follow up (and learn they weren’t done), or see them done in a way different than what I would have preferred. That was a huge handicap for me for a time. This has taught me to get better at delegating and setting expectations, however. I learned that absolute clarity is hard to achieve, but is always the goal when handing things off.
What leadership qualities do you possess that, in your opinion, inspire your employees to work harder and be more productive?
Robin Burrill: I am extremely decisive, which I have seen rub off on team members in a great way. There is nothing wishy-washy about the way I lead. If someone comes to me with something they’ve worked on, even if it missed the mark, there’s no fear because they know my feedback will be quick. I am a high-pressure fountain of ideas employees can take and run with if they’re willing to grow.
I state what needs to be changed, improved, and looked at again. I do not applaud what’s done well nearly as often, but that’s not because my team doesn’t do amazing work. I set the lowest bar at doing everything well, so meeting that expectation rarely earns my praise. This has created an environment of excellence where employees work harder to get those rare occasions where I tell them they’ve hit it out of the park.
A national survey from the University of Phoenix has found that 95 percent of employees who have functioned as part of a team think that teams are an important workplace function but less than 25 percent prefer working in teams. Individual and teamwork both have their advantages and disadvantages. What work model have you adopted and how has it benefited your organization?
Robin Burrill: Our team is hugely team-focused because the work every one of us does impacts the others in crucial ways. That’s the nature of the business we’re in, where one project can mean a $100,000 to $1,000,000+ contract. A lot of work goes into one single project.
We do have a big divide in our team, though, that helps give people a sense of autonomy alongside the team nature of our industry: and that’s the division between the construction (field) staff and the operational (office) staff. Each of these teams represent about half our personnel, and the divide has given people a tighter-knit sense of team as well as helped people stay in their own lanes of what responsibilities they “own.” We all have a lot of individual work, but all those individual responsibilities do feed into the bigger team accountabilities.
People often procrastinate when they are unsure of how to do certain tasks. Is there an element of your business process that employees shy away from? How do you counter this problem?
Robin Burrill: We do not tolerate procrastination. Our industry moves too fast, especially today. We set the expectation from day one that people are to try, do their absolute best, and look for their own answers to complete something, even if it has to be corrected after they turn deliverables in. We check progress often and ask daily what team members need to be successful in what they need to do.
Many businesses today are being overwhelmed with all kinds of data which impacts productivity. How do you ensure that you and your employees are focusing on the right metrics?
Robin Burrill: Fortunately, our industry isn’t inundated with as much confusing or unnecessary data as others. We’re actually spending a lot of our effort now building systems that give us more of the data we really need, like exact breakdowns of where dollars go on projects. We share numbers with employees at least monthly, especially lead conversion numbers and contracts signed. What data we do share focuses on how much we’ve grown so employees know what opportunities they have as the growth continues.
According to PwC, nearly 60% of survey respondents reported that they would like feedback on a daily or weekly basis. Which employee feedback system does your business use to boost productivity?
Robin Burrill: We have anonymous “start, stop, keep doing” surveys we sent to personnel as well as weekly meetings every Monday where the President (my husband) and CEO (me) aren’t included. The Monday meetings focus on what needs to get done and what our staff needs in terms of time, materials and systems to support them doing it. We let our key managers run that show, then advocate for their staff when they come to us.
What financial or non-financial incentives do you offer employees for motivation? What role has that played in increasing productivity?
Robin Burrill: We do so much to offer motivation! We have monthly newsletters with games like employee-fact matching games, bingo and more to win anything from free lunch to a full day off from work. We have a system of “kudos” cards employees can fill out for coworkers, too. We are also developing a monthly team activity to have some fun on the clock.
If you had an unlimited budget and resources to spend on increasing productivity, what is the first thing that you would change?
Robin Burrill: We would hire a consultant to help us extract absolutely all the accountabilities and to-dos we have, and then organize them into our project management platforms (Builder Trend, ClickUp, Trello). We have been doing this internally, but with so much work on the table it has been a slow-moving project. It is also a gargantuan project. We’re invested in doing it, though, because this simple system of setting specific deliverables and responsibilities up with their requirements and due dates, not to mention a calendar of tasks and notifications, has already been rewarding as far as we’ve implemented it.
According to Gusto, 54% of employees say a strong sense of community (great coworkers, celebrating milestones, a common mission) kept them at a company longer than was in their best interest. How do you improve the way teams work together? How do you build a sense of community?
Robin Burrill: We recently celebrated three employee anniversaries, a birthday, and the company anniversary in March, so that was a good month to use as an example! On top of recognizing special dates, we also regularly gift our employees swag and special gifts when we know personal things are going on. We’re also excited about the Culture Club monthly activities we’re organizing. That will be rolled out in the second quarter of this year!
There are other community efforts we make that are simpler, but just as valuable. For example, our bingo game in the last employee newsletter was based entirely on conversation starters to use with coworkers.
This has been very insightful and I’m sure other entrepreneurs can learn from the knowledge you have provided. As for your company’s future, what big changes are coming down the pipe in the next 6 months that might increase productivity?
Robin Burrill: Within the next six months, we will be launching our Culture Club as well as finishing the lion share of task entry into our project management platforms. In a short time, our whole company will be working off of streamlined, automated reminders integrated into our daily processes. Everything will be a click away, from our project boards to our shared drive in the cloud. This includes building in greater transparency of tasks, too, so each team member will be accountable to the rest of the team who both knows about those assignments and, in many cases, is waiting on deliverables to take next steps.
Productivity is important but as is an employee’s wellbeing. What are you currently doing to prevent employees from burning out?
Robin Burrill: First, we believe in a work-home separation. Team members are accountable for crucial notifications about upcoming client meetings or other time-sensitive tasks, but we have a system to flag the urgent messages and let the rest sit in someone’s inbox until the next day at work. Prioritizing is one of the most fundamental things we work to train our staff on, too, so they can focus on the important things and avoid burnout when they look at the full list of things to do…because there is a LOT.
Thank you so much for your time but before we finish things off, we do have one more question. We will select these answers for our ValiantCEO Award 2021 edition. The best answers will be selected to challenge the award.
Share with us one of the most difficult decisions you had to make, this past year 2021, for your company that benefited your employees or customers. What made this decision so difficult and what were the positive impacts?
Robin Burrill: Some of the most unpleasant decisions of the last several months were actually the easiest, because when there is an urgent problem, our action is always driven by integrity. We do the right thing, no matter what, no matter who’s watching. Those decisions are the easiest to come to. There have been other more difficult decisions, though, and those are usually more about where to invest our resources. We have been working to get our online presence even more robust than it already is, and it’s been a challenge to decide which provider or consultant to hire. There are so many providers who claim they can “own your SEO,” or get you leads on this social network or that one, but we will only work with those who are specific to our industry and have a portfolio of cases studies that impress us. This search has been a challenge, but we do have total clarity in our expectations!
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Robin Burrill for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Robin Burrill or her company, you can do it through her – Instagram
Disclaimer: The ValiantCEO Community welcomes voices from many spheres on our open platform. We publish pieces as written by outside contributors with a wide range of opinions, which don’t necessarily reflect our own. Community stories are not commissioned by our editorial team and must meet our guidelines prior to being published.
