A Thoroughly Modern Entrepreneur

Meet Della Hansmann, the founder and lead architect of Mid Mod Midwest, a business that specializes in remodeling mid-century homes to fit modern lifestyles. With her Mid-Century Master Plan Method, she guides homeowners through the essential steps of remodel planning, from gathering information about the family's needs to establishing a style vision for the remodel. Della's passion for the industry started when she bought her own modest mid-century ranch house and saw how often people struggled to update their mid-century homes. She now leads a team of four, helping homeowners appreciate and personalize their midcentury homes. Despite the challenges of working with individual homeowners and contractors, Della is dedicated to finding a work/life balance and building a business where her team can meet their financial and creative needs in under 35 hours a week.

Mid Mod Midwest helps owners of mid-century homes to plan remodels that fit their MCM homes to their modern lives. I’ve developed the Mid-Century Master Plan Method to help walk people through the essential steps of remodel planning

A Mid-Century Master Plan begins in pre-design by gathering information about what the family needs in their dream home to support their lifestyle, learning what’s necessary about the structure, condition, and layout of the home, and establishing a style vision for what they want their remodel to look and feel like Then we continue to the design phase and draft multiple layout options for the different spaces in the house We always show one option that is more minimal - how to get the most change for the least effort - one that is more mid-range and one that offers a more dramatic vision.

Finally, we develop one schematic set of floor plans and perspective sketches, paired with a materials style guide for the project - that the homeowner can use to work with contractors or to guide their own DIY home improvement project for the next year or years to come.

We help people get to their Master Plan in several ways. We offer a flat fee masterplan service where we walk through those pre-design phases WITH the owner and then do the design thinking and drafting to provide them with the solutions to develop. And we have a homeowner design program where I teach the master plan method steps and provide ongoing support to people who want to make their own plans.

What drew you to this industry? What about it keeps you in the game after all these

years?

I’ve always been fascinated by how important and distinct people's homes are In every part of the world, a house looks and works differently but they all also have things in common

When I bought my own modest, mid-century ranch house I became fascinated by how pleasant, livable, and right-sized this type of house can be And how overlooked they are as a distinct style. I got frustrated watching people fumble updates of their ranches. They’d too often take advice from contractors more familiar with the current HGTV trends than with what is great about a mid-century design. I wanted to help people appreciate and personalize their mid-century homes.

I started with my own home, consulted with friends, and friends of friends on their homes and soon had a small freelance business. Now we have a team of four and every day is an exciting chance to help someone new to make great choices for their mid-century home!

What do you like to do outside of growing your business?

I’m pretty focused on the business right now but I do a lot of reading and checking in with friends. I always take time to get outside with my active rescue dog. To take a break from designing houses, I also remodel my own house and design knitting and sewing projects. I guess I never get too far from my core interests!

At my Prosperity Tree, we talk a lot about pain points. These are the aspects of a business that cause stress for business owners, the things they worry about, what keeps them from succeeding, etc. Every industry has different pain points. What are some you encounter often in your industry?

The remodel planning space has a lot of variables. Working with individual homeowners means you’re deeply dependent on the personal lives of your clients. And working with contractors means you’re involved in supply lines, the economy, and labor issues. Balancing the workload of my small team means sometimes we’re rushing and sometimes dragging

We’re all about improving the lifestyle of the business owner. How do you feel like your work /life balance has changed since you hired a business growth coach?

This is a constant work in progress for me. I am not very good at taking my mind off work but part of the fun of being a business owner is that there’s always a different KIND of work to switch to. Tired of solving design problems? Why not work on social media marketing for a while? When that’s got me worn down, I’m usually happy to noodle on someone’s kitchen layout again.

I do have a huge benefit of running a fully remote team so, while we check in on each other regularly and communicate often, there’s always time to pause in the middle of the day to run an errand or get lunch with a friend.

Finally, what’s your idea of a wellbalanced life?

I’m working toward building a business where I, and everyone else on my team, can get our financial and creative needs met at work in under 35 hours a week in a calm and predictable way. What a dream!