AI for Interior Designers™ *Podcast

Episode 77: The AI Conversation No One Wants to Have

I took the summer off, and I'm not easing back in gently. This week I'm having the conversation I don't see enough people in this industry having out loud: AI development right now does not have enough guardrails, and I think that deserves real attention, even though I still use AI every single day.

Here's the good news I was sitting on all summer. While I was away, I finished building something I've wanted for two years: the AI Social Club, one home for community, ongoing education, and the AI tools I've actually built for design businesses, instead of five subscriptions that were never made for us.

I also get into how I actually use AI day to day (it's almost never a prompt box), why I built this community myself instead of joining an existing one, and the one habit I think every designer needs around backing up their own data so no single tool or company can hold your business hostage.

What you will take away:

Why I'm calling this Season 4 instead of pretending it's a fresh start

My honest, specific concerns about how AI models are being developed right now

Why I built the AI Social Club myself instead of joining an existing community

How I actually use AI day to day, and why it's almost never a prompt box

The one habit I want every designer to build around backing up their own data

The one thing to take from this episode: do not let your business depend on a single software or AI tool staying exactly the way it is today. Back up your data locally and in the cloud, both, and choose tools you could walk away from if you had to.

Starting September 24, this show records live in The Loft inside the AI Social Club. It's free to join, and you'll hear the episode a full day before it publishes anywhere else. If this one resonated, follow the show so you never miss an episode, share it with a designer friend, and come join us live at theaisocialclub.com.

Episode 76 | AI Pulse: Jenna's Predictions for Where AI Is Heading
AI for Interior Designers™ Podcast · Jenna Gaidusek

Nearly 3 years into teaching AI for Interior Designers, Jenna shares her predictions and a current pulse of where AI is and where she predicts it will be in the future, with one honest disclaimer: she is not here to guess where AI lands in five years. Nobody knows that. What she can tell you is what she has actually been building for the past three years, and where that points next. The short version is custom tools. The kind you build yourself, designed for how you actually work, instead of renting fifty subscriptions that were never made for the design business.

She gets into the irony of developers handing us the tools to finally cut out the middleman, why the backend has always been the real hurdle and how it is finally getting easier, and the simplest place for you to start today. No big pitch this time, just a candid look at where this is all going and what she is doing about it.

Learn more at aiforinteriordesigners.com

Key Takeaways

Jenna is done making wild five and ten year predictions, and she thinks you should be too. The tech is moving too fast and too unpredictably for anyone to call it. What matters is watching what is tangible right now and building from there.

The real shift she sees coming is custom tools. Not chatbots, not always AI-powered, just apps that do exactly what you need. Designers are not web developers or data scientists, and for the first time they do not have to be. They live the work, which means they know what they need better than any third party ever could.

The irony is not lost on her. The same developers who built the "is your living room ugly" apps and cut professional designers out for years have now built tools so good that designers can build it themselves, and finally cut them out of the things they were always told they needed.

The backend is the part that actually stops people. Building an app is easy. Deploying it so others can use it, with login, security, and working APIs, is the wall. That used to be Jenna's whole disconnect, and it is getting easier every month across Gemini Studio, Base44, and Claude Code.

Artifacts are the easiest entry point. They are little one-purpose apps built right inside Claude, like a pricing calculator or a proposal builder. You build it once, save it, and use it constantly with no backend headache.

Everything Jenna builds now lives in one connected hub. Two years of little builds became the AI Social Club™: proposals, lead generators, her CRM, and the App Studio, all in one place. The rule she builds by is simple. If you do something twice, make an app for it. Then automate it.

Episode 75: Get Messy, Make Mistakes

This week I am taking you behind the scenes of something I usually keep private: the real, unglamorous work of building. After two years in the making, I finally launched Field Day and the AI Social Club™ app, and I want to talk about what that process actually looks like when you do it out loud.

I get into why I build everything myself first, learn it inside and out, and then turn around and teach it to you. That is the whole reason I do what I do. When you hit a wall in your own design business, I have usually been right there, so I can walk you through it.

I also share where I see our industry heading. The ChatGPT design client is real, new business models are popping up, and a clear divide is forming in who our ideal clients are now. None of this means designers are going anywhere. It means we get to build our own table instead of waiting for an invite to someone else's.

What you will take away:

Why I build, test, and learn every tool before I teach it

How the interior design client is shifting in the age of AI

The new business models showing up as designers adapt

Why I build for community first, never just for me

The Miss Frizzle rule I live by: get messy, make mistakes, and actually remember what you learned

If this one resonated, follow the show so you never miss an episode, and share it with a designer friend who needs the reminder that the tech is the problem, not them.

In episode 74 of the AI for Interior Designers Podcast, host Jenna Gaidusek gets into the idea that tools most interior designers have been using to run their businesses were created by tech companies and accountants, not by designers. And that mismatch has been quietly shaping (and limiting) the way you work for years.

In this solo episode, Jenna breaks down why this happened, why the subscription sprawl is a symptom and not the actual problem, and why AI finally makes it possible to build tools that work the way you actually work — instead of the other way around.

If you have ever felt like your software is fighting you instead of helping you, this episode is for you.

What's covered in this episode:

Why off-the-shelf design software was never really built for designers

The subscription sprawl problem — and how the big LLMs are replacing most of it

What custom dashboards and mini apps actually look like in practice

The proposal builder example: discovery call in, formatted proposal out

Why technology is about to become invisible — and what that means for your business

Why small businesses have a real advantage over corporations in AI adoption right now

The question you need to answer before you rebuild anything: what would your ideal business look like if the technology didn't limit it?

Links mentioned:

Register for Field Day: https://aiforinteriordesigners.com/field-day

AI for Interior Designers™: https://aiforinteriordesigners.com

Follow on Instagram: @aiforinteriordesigners

Field Day — Summer 2025 Tuesdays, June 2 through July 28 | 10am–12:20pm ET $249 for 9 weeks | $397 bundle with study halls | $99 single study hall

 

TOOLS MENTIONED

Claude — claude.ai

Gemini — gemini.google.com

Perplexity — perplexity.ai

Canva — canva.com

Base44 — base44.com 

 

REGISTER FOR FIELD DAY

9 weeks. Every Tuesday. Starting June 2nd at 10am ET. Learn the tools, get quick wins, and start building what your business actually needs.

🔗 aiforinteriordesigners.com/field-day

Episode 73 — What I'm Doing This Summer (And Why I Want You to Join Me) AI for Interior Designers™ Podcast · Jenna Gaidusek

Jenna gets honest about what's been happening behind the scenes — a scattered site, an evolving program, and a summer that's finally clearing the runway. She shares why she permanently left ChatGPT for Claude + Gemini, how she actually uses AI (spoiler: it's not chat threads - it's custom apps and branded dashboards built for real design workflows), and what's coming this summer with Field Day, a 9-week live AI learning program starting June 2nd.

Open enrollment pricing drops from $149 → $79. A new website is on the way. The AI App Studio is growing. And none of it is built by a tech company guessing what designers need.

 Field Day — Enroll Now (Starting June 2nd): aiforinteriordesigners.com/field-day

Key Takeaways

After more than three months away from it, Jenna has officially and permanently moved on from ChatGPT — not because of the product, but because of the company and the people running it. Her current stack is Claude and Gemini, and she is not looking back.

The way Jenna actually uses AI has almost nothing to do with typing into a chat thread. She builds branded apps, dashboards, and custom AI-powered tools that pull from spreadsheets and calendars and produce beautiful, functional interfaces designed specifically for design business workflows.

The AI App Studio inside her programs is growing — and every tool in it was built by a working designer, for working designers. Not by a tech company that thinks it knows what you need.

Field Day is a 9-week summer AI learning program starting Tuesday, June 2nd. It begins at absolute square one and builds every single week, with live sessions, structured study halls, and hands-on implementation time built into every class.

Open enrollment class pricing is dropping from $149 to $79. The economy is hard, and Jenna wants more designers to be able to access the training. Plain and simple.

A fully rebuilt, highly interactive website is in progress and coming soon. The current site is being untangled — Jenna knows it, she owns it, and it is getting fixed.