Lauren and Wendy Nolan-Sellers readily admitted they were scared when they quit their day jobs in 2012 to launch a home-design company.
Until then, Lauren, a Philadelphia public-school teacher, had only dabbled in design. While she and wife Wendy were searching for a house, she developed an affinity for HGTV. Once they settled on a home, she channeled what she’d learned into redesigning it.
The first time the couple entertained in their new home, the feedback was incredible.
“People were saying like, ‘How did you do this?’ and ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe the changes you’ve made!’” said Lauren.
And their friends wanted to pick her brain.
“So, it started off just with friends informally asking for advice,” Lauren recalled. “And then that morphed into, ‘I hear you do design and I’d be willing to pay you.’ So at that point I was like, Wait a minute, there’s an opportunity here.
“We sort of jumped out there with no experience, no know-how. It wasn’t like a planned thing. It was like, Should we do this? And then the opportunity presented itself.”
And they seized it.
In the six years that followed, the Nolan-Sellers have become the self-made owners of Trust the Vision Decor, an interior-decorating firm that renovates homes for Philadelphia-area clients. Lauren is the designer, Wendy handles the finances and, since 2015, they’ve managed to rack up five “Best of” awards from home-design site Houzz.
Once the couple decided to make a go of the business, Lauren enrolled in an online design course. She booked her first client — a New York executive with a Lancaster condo — through an ad online.
“Again, we didn’t know anything about business at all. It’s really hilarious,” said Lauren. “So we thought, Where do we look for stuff? Oh — let’s check Craigslist.”
Since the company’s first redesign, Trust the Vision has completed more than 75 renovations for a growing list of celebrity clients that now includes Phillies manager Gabe Kaplan and 93.3 WMMR personality Kathy Romano.
In the past year, the couple has expanded its business model with a course for beginning designers called Aspiring Designers Academy.
“When we initially jumped out there and we didn’t know what we were doing, we made tons of mistakes,” said Lauren. “And when we were looking for a mentor or someone to help us, we couldn’t really find anything that was comprehensive.”
Aspiring Designers Academy offers what the couple calls a systematic business process: a step-by-step guide to realizing a client’s goals.
“What we’re trying to do is save people time and money and help them get to where they want to be — faster,” said Wendy.
Lauren admitted that, as green entrepreneurs, she and Wendy repeatedly made the mistake of undervaluing their services and thus undercharging clients.
It wasn’t until a client confessed that her redesigned bedroom had potentially saved her marriage that Lauren understood the impact of her work.
“We realized that’s what we’re bringing to the table. It’s not just a pretty space. If we have the ability to help people spend more time together, to help people rebuild relationships — that’s the optimum. It makes you look at what you do and how you value it totally differently.”
The couple’s latest project is their own new home: a fixer-upper they bought in South Jersey that they’re currently gutting and renovating while raising their two children — an 8-month-old son and a 6-year-old daughter.
“We’re showing our kids what’s possible with hard work and determination,” said Wendy. “If you don’t know if you want to do something or not, we just say, ‘Why not?’”
