What turns a backordered sofa into a lawsuit? Laurie Laizure opens this To-The-Trade episode with a real case: a client suing their designer after a year of delays, cancellations, and a fight over vendor invoices. The delays were normal. The breakdown was trust.

Kat Oldershaw (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kat-oldershaw/), founder of kat&co (https://www.katandco.org/) and Back Office Design Support (https://www.backofficedesignsupport.com/) and co-owner of a Napa custom furniture company, handles everything besides design. Her view: clients need someone to translate the industry for them before problems arise. If clients keep asking the same question at the same stage, fix your onboarding. If something happened that you never want to repeat, put it in your service agreement.

Laurie shares a client who wanted a September kickoff finished by Christmas. She told him up front it wouldn’t happen. A year later, he’s a convert. Setting expectations early works.

Consistency is Kat’s through-line. A contract or welcome guide means nothing if you bend it. Make one exception and clients learn the boundaries are flexible, and the Saturday texts follow.

On hiring, Kat and Laurie warn against hiring a version of yourself, and against hiring in a panic before roles are defined. Sometimes the processes need to come first. Laurie adds that AI tools can make costly mistakes, just like people. Kat explains why her Back Office team is US-based and industry-experienced: they speak the language of quotes and POs and may already know your reps.