From music to medicine to motherhood to design: the story of The Little Design Corner

People often ask me how The Little Design Corner started but the truth is it was never designed to be a business, especially not one that has done as well as it has.

It all started as a side project, a creative outlet and a way to explore my love of design all while juggling a corporate career and three young kids (one with profound disabilities).

But looking back, every step my journey led to this moment, even if it didn’t really make sense at the time.

From music to medicine to motherhood to design

Rewinding way back (before The Little Design Corner existed) I was on a completely different path.

I studied classical music (I played the oboe) and did my Bachelor of Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and followed by a Master of Music at the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London. It was while I was in London that I realised that I didn’t actually love music. I’d pursued it because I was good at it, not because I was passionate about it. The pressure of performing and the lack of job and career stability made me question whether music was the right path for me.

So I pivoted.

I transitioned into academia, starting a doctorate while still in London at the RCM on the topic of performance anxiety (something I knew all too well from my years of stage fright). But My mum was diagnosed with breast cancer and I was very homesick. So I made the difficult decision to leave London and return home to Sydney. It was a hard choice and I felt like I was letting people down, including my professors and my parents, but deep down, I knew I needed to be home.

Back in Australia, I was highly educated but had no clear career path.

After applying for a string of jobs I was WAY overqualified for (including many receptionist roles that I got turned down for). Eventually, thanks to a family friend taking pity on me, I landed a receptionist role at the College of General Practitioners. I started at the front desk and quickly worked my way up, moving into program management and eventually into a senior education role at a different medical college - The Royal Australiasian College of Physicians. I spent years immersed in curriculum development, training doctors and learning everything I could about education and instructional design.

That experience turned out to be foundational in what I do today.

Here's me delivering a lecture to a room full of doctors back in my days at the College of Physicians. 

Then motherhood happened and everything changed again…

My husband and I a few days after our eldest son was born 👆🏻

The accidental business

While on maternity leave with my first son, I decided to enrol in a PhD (because I wanted something to work on and think about while having tiny children). I had recently completed a Master of Public Policy and had developed an interest in change management and corporate social responsibility, so this was the topic I was keen to pursue with the PhD.

Two years later, our second son, Hugo, was born and life was turned upside down. He was born with a rare chromosomal condition called Wolf Hirschhorn Syndrome and was given almost no chance of survival.

Here he is a few hours after he was born. The first night was very touch and go 👇🏻

The years that followed were spent in and out of hospitals but through that chaos I somehow finished my doctorate, had a third baby and re-entered the workforce, consulting in medical education.

Here I am at my PhD graduation. I still have no idea how I did that with such little children and so much difficult stuff happening with Hugo at the time 👇🏻

But something still felt off and I wanted more control over my time. I wanted to be at home with my kids and I wanted a creative outlet.

Then one lunchtime at my corporate job, I stumbled across a design blog (The Design Chaser) and thought "This looks fun, why can’t I start something like this?" so I taught myself how to build a website on Squarespace and named my new little design blog, The Little Design Corner (a business name I am not super fond of and never would have called my business had I known where it would end up, but that's a whole other story!!). I had no business plan and no monetisation strategy, just a love for interiors and a desire to share some of my ideas. I started posting about my own home projects, trends I loved and did some interviews with other designers.

After writing on my blog consistently for a few months something unexpected happened!! People started reading and asking for help and then hiring me to help them with their homes. It was so crazy and I couldn't believe people were paying me to do something I would have happily helped them do for free!! 

From blog to busines

At first, I was taking on small interior design projects e.g. helping local mums from my kids’ school with styling their homes, choosing furniture and preparing homes for sale. But what started as a hobby soon became a full time business. Over six years, I then worked one-on-one with design clients, refining my processes, learning as much as I could about delivering exceptional design projects and understanding what it really took to run a successful design business.

Eventually my time was fully booked out with clients (because I did a really good job and had a huge amount of word of mouth referrals) but I knew I wanted to scale and that I was capable of more. I knew I didn’t want a traditional interior design firm with staff and overhead, I wanted a business model that gave me freedom while allowing me to continue to earn good money.

That’s when I leaned heavily on my background in curriculum development and education and started looking at less "traditional" ways to grow. I knew firsthand that designers struggled with the technical and business sides of running their studios so I decided to teach them these skills. 

My first online course, SketchUp for Interior Design, launched as an experiment. I had no expectations but to my surprise it took off (in a big way!). Designers were desperate for resources that made learning software and running their businesses easier. That course opened the door to everything that followed i.e. more courses, templates and a rapidly growing audience of designers/architects looking for practical business education.

A family business

A few years later, something big happened. My husband, Paul, who had spent over 20 years in the corporate world, decided to leave his career and join me in the business. It wasn’t a decision we made lightly. At that time Paul was still the financial safety net of our family and leaving a stable executive role for an online business was a massive leap, but we both saw the potential.

With Paul on board we were able to refine our marketing, optimise our systems and truly scale (basically he did the things I hated lol!). We doubled down on what was working e.g. paid ads, organic marketing and creating exceptional products that solved real problems for designers.

Fast forward a few more years and as of late 2025 The Little Design Corner has done over $12 million in sales since taking the business online in 2019.

What we stand for

Underpinning everything I do at The Little Design Corner are three core values that I’ve had since the start.

🎯 BE YOUR BEST
I believe in excellence. Whether it's my products, customer service or the way we show up every day. I hold myself to a high standard and a commitment to always being better.

🥳 SURPRISE AND DELIGHT
Education should be fun. I go beyond delivering high quality programs and like to create experiences that are rewarding and engaging and not the same as boring learning others are delivering. 

🎓 LEAD BY EXAMPLE
I believe in generosity and openly sharing what I know. I try and lead by example in the way I behave the the things I do.

I never set out to build a $12 million+ business. I just kept following what excited me, solving problems for people and creating things that I wished existed when I was starting out.

That’s still how I approach the business today and that’s where I’ll continue to take it into the future.

(For future readers, this post was first written in March 2025 and updated in February 2026). 

Thanks for reading and catch you in my next post :)

Clare x

Dr Clare Le Roy