Soucie Horner, Ltd. on Building Your Network

Designers Shea Soucie and Martin Horner have been friends since their college days, first at the Art Institute of Chicago and then at the Ecole Speciale d’Architecture in Paris. In 2000 they teamed up to create Soucie Horner, Ltd., a Chicago-based design firm specializing in high end residential design. Here are some of their secrets for playing well with others.

Every quarter you host a Salon Dinner to encourage collaboration between various design-related industries. Who might be on the guest list? 

MH: For our Salon Dinners we invite eight people from different industries to one of our homes to enjoy a meal together.  The list includes architects, designers, financial advisors, real estate developers, manufacturers, educators, artists, magazine editors and marketing executives.  SS: Many different fields connect to the design world and we want to see how people in other related fields look at design.

Why the dinner format?

SS: It’s just more intimate.  We found that at a cocktail party you might only talk to someone for ten minutes and then you’d leave wishing you could have explored a topic more or you thought of someone else it would be good to add to the conversation.  MH: We really started the Salon Dinners to increase our own knowledge, but now we see the benefits to everyone who attends. It’s really a terrific way to meet people you never would have met before and to find out what’s going on outside your own sphere. 

What spurs conversation at your Salon Dinners? 

SS: We send a discussion topic out ahead of time so our guests have a chance to think about how they might contribute to the conversation before they arrive.  For example, at our last Salon Dinner we talked about what determines “value” in each guest’s industry.   We debated whether value always meant the least expensive product, which led to talking about how our individual clients interpret value. A banker in attendance later told us how interesting it had been to hear people outside the financial industry talk about this topic. MH: By the way, this same idea of making your guests feel comfortable before they arrive works for home entertaining as well. Instead of sending out a conversation topic beforehand, start with a party theme and that will help your guests think of ways to interact before they even walk through the door.

How important is networking with other designers? 

MH: We were both raised in family businesses and saw that networking was important to making any business work. By being willing to give and take within the design community, we’ve established a network of people we can call on to help with our own projects. SS: The design industry has really opened up in recent years. It used to be that designers were very protective of their sources and business practices, but the veil has dropped—it’s really a much more collaborative industry than it used to be.

With the increased access to design products, how do you work with clients who might feel like they don’t need a professional any more?

SS: People can find products, but they don’t always know how to put them together and why.  That’s how we feel relevant. We’ve found that even if clients are well versed in design ideas and products, they often find they need help pulling it all together.  That’s where the team approach applies to working with clients. MH: In those situations—which often happen with young clients-- we act as a consultant who gets hired because the client knows we’ll get the job done.

For more information on Shea Soucie and Martin Horner, visit their website.