Katie McFarlan, Founder of Dakota Design Company
Name: Katie McFarlan
Company: Dakota Design Company
Who is Katie McFarlan?
Katie McFarlan is the founder and CEO of Dakota Design Company, an operations and business consultancy for luxury interior designers.
As a former wedding and event planner with 18 years of operations and business experience, Katie knows what it takes to get behind-the-scenes operations running smoothly so businesses can grow in a professional way.
As a female founder and mother of three, Katie's passionate about helping busy female founders take back their time, transform their business, make more money with less work, and get back to the creative work they love.
Tell us about your company and what you do.
Dakota Design Company serves wedding planners and interior designers who want to deliver a luxury experience to their clients but are buried in work and don’t have the time or bandwidth to build a strong foundation for their business.
DDC works directly with business owners to streamline their services and create a strategic client experience, as well as helping to refine and implement processes their team and clients will appreciate, identify who they should hire, and create systems that allow business to scale all while avoiding burnout and prioritizing work-life balance.
What does BEING a FoundHer mean to you?
To me, being a FoundHer means opening up opportunities for other women and female founders.
How do you support other female founders and women in business?
I'm passionate about helping and uplifting women, whether it's my clients, employees, or business partners. To date, all of my 1:1 clients have been female business owners. My team is composed entirely of women, most of whom are working moms with small children. This is important to me as a mom of three little girls who I want to empower to do anything they set their minds to do. It is also important to me to hire moms and provide them with flexible remote work because I know the struggle of wanting to use your skills in the workforce while juggling the desire to be a good mom--and I know how hard it can be to find trustworthy childcare. The roles I’ve created for my team allow them to work when they want with the focus always being family first.
What would you do differently if you were starting your business today?
There's truly no rulebook for starting a business, and I, like so many other first-time business owners, definitely struggled with how to take the first step when launching Dakota Design Company.
A unique challenge that I’ve faced in my time as a small business owner is understanding (and embracing) that I can structure my business however I want (as long as it’s ethical of course) and because of that, I have to trust myself even when sometimes I am not sure which direction will be best. If I could start over, I'd tell myself to worry less about the details and dive into the work as soon as possible.
I'd tell young Katie: do what you can to start working with clients and gaining experience, even if it means billing hourly and simply saying YES to one-off projects. From there, you’ll begin to learn how to structure and price your services, what you like to do and what you actually don’t like to do. You don’t need a fancy website to sell or start working with clients, just get started with your expertise and hard work.
Spending less time and money on website branding, social media marketing, etc. upfront and instead focusing those efforts on diving into client work, I would have saved myself countless edits to my website, pricing structure, and services.
What are three strategies you use to market your business, grow brand awareness and generate bottom line growth?
1. Blogging + SEO
SEO optimization and blogging are long-game marketing strategies and ones I have used successfully in both of my businesses.
When clients regularly receive free and valuable content from you, it goes a long way toward eliminating a sense of being sold to or profited from. When it comes time for them to reach out for your paid services, they already feel rewarded by the helpful content, inspiration, and tips you have graciously shared.
2. Pinterest
I can't talk about blogging and SEO without talking about Pinterest. I use Pinterest to expand the reach of my blog posts. I've personally seen both blogs and Pinterest content lead to project inquiries and new clients.
3. Email Marketing
Anyone who is on my email list knows I have a thing for writing and sending emails. Writing and helping people are my two favorite things to do. I also love the connection I’ve formed with the business owners and the people who are on my list and who reply to my emails, and it's led to countless new clients throughout the years.
Email is also the main way I share when I am accepting new clients, offering new products or sales, or hosting upcoming events/workshops. I can’t imagine how I would communicate all that information and have the reach that I do without my email list and my Friday morning email drops.
Many business owners I speak to share that email is the LAST thing they have time for. But here’s the thing – when people sign up to be on your list, they want to form a connection with you. They are asking you to send them stuff. They want to hear from you, and that's why I believe email marketing is an essential business strategy.
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