GIVE EVERYDAY · Speaking Journal · SPU Business Talk · Sripatum University · 20 October 2026
Reflections on speaking to business students at Sripatum University about value, understanding customers, and what interior design has taught me about business.
An architecture student talks business with business students
Who would have thought that the architecture student I once was would one day be talking business with business students?
On 20 October 2026, I was honoured to be invited by the dean and Ajarn Sira of Sripatum University to speak at SPU Business Talk on the topic “Design Your Value: Think Differently, Create Value, Give Customers a Reason to Choose You.” The audience was third- and fourth-year business students taking a course that connects learning with practice. They were developing businesses from scratch and testing them in the real market.
Why would a designer talk about business?
When the invitation arrived, I wondered what an interior designer could share with business students.
But as I prepared, I realised that every project in more than a decade at Gratitude Design has required answers to exactly the same questions business owners face.
- Who are we creating this for?
- What do they really need? Often, it is not the first thing they tell us.
- What are the constraints: budget, space and time?
- Why should they choose what we offer?
I did not go as someone with all the answers. I went as a business owner who works hands-on with clients, competitors, a team and problems that need solving every day. I wanted to record what I shared, for anyone thinking about the same things.
“Who wants to be rich? Raise your hand.”
I opened with the most direct question, and the response was predictable: hands went up across the room. Then I asked, “Who already has a business?” The hands gradually came down.
The gap between those two rounds of raised hands was what I wanted to explore for the next hour.
Before going further, I told the students honestly that running a business is not the only way to have a good life. Employment offers steady income, the ability to plan, systems to learn from and talented colleagues, without risking your own money. With a business, you set your own direction. Your income has no ceiling, but it has no floor either.
Neither path is better. There is only the path that suits you at a particular point in your life.
Whichever path you choose, income comes from the same source: the value we create for others. Companies pay us because we help solve their problems. Clients pay us because we help solve theirs. As the problems we solve become bigger, clearer and more important, income often follows.
That is why the talk was called Design Your Value. It applies to businesses and to us as individuals.
Customers are not buying a sofa
One lesson interior design keeps teaching me is this: customers are not buying a sofa. They are buying a home they want to return to every day.
I showed the students three sofas: one costing thousands of baht, another tens of thousands, and an Italian brand costing millions. All three provide a place to sit, but their prices differ by hundreds of times because they offer different layers of value.
- It works. You can sit on it, and it fits the room. This matters, and for many homes it is exactly what is needed.
- It feels good. It helps you unwind, and it is where you want to be when you come home.
- It expresses who I am. Its story, details and identity give the homeowner something to feel proud of.
Each has its customers. None is wrong. What matters is understanding which layer our customers need.
There is more than one meaning of luxury
Many clients tell me, “I want a luxurious home.” If I immediately chose marble and expensive lighting, every home would look the same, and none would feel like it belonged to its owner.
So I always start by asking: “What does luxury mean to you?” The answers are never the same. For some, it means calm. For others, privacy. It might be a long dining table where the family gathers, a small reading corner to enjoy alone, or simplicity: choosing fewer things, but choosing them better.
The same word can describe very different needs. Business is similar. Phrases such as “good quality” and “good service” only mean something when customers can experience what they actually stand for.
Understand people before deciding for them
A skill I use every day, but that rarely gets discussed, is Empathy — trying to understand the world from another person’s perspective before offering our own preferences as their answer.
Throughout the talk, I used one everyday example: breakfast sandwiches on campus. Saying “we sell sandwiches” tells us only what the product is. Talking to students with early classes might reveal that they do want breakfast, but the queue is so long they worry about being late. The question immediately changes from “How do we sell sandwiches?” to “How can we help them have breakfast without waiting in line?”
Compliments are not sales
When we want to test an idea, we often ask, “Would you buy this?” The answer usually reflects intention, especially when friends are trying to be kind. I encouraged the students to ask instead: “The last time you faced this problem, what did you do?” That gives us something they actually did, rather than a promise.
Interested → asks to try → willing to pay → buys again. Each stage tells us something different. The final stage is the clearest evidence that we have created real value.
Customers choose us because…
I left the students with one sentence to complete in a single line:
For [whom] who [face what problem], we are [what] who [how we differ from the alternatives].
Thinking differently does not mean being strange. You do not have to be better at everything. Be clearly better at one thing your customers care about. This sentence works for a business and for a job application. If you cannot fill in the last part, you do not yet have a reason for someone to choose you. Go back and talk to your customers again.
One final lesson: repeat, and keep going
Nothing I described worked after just one attempt. The final lesson I shared was the simplest and hardest at the same time: repeat, and keep going.
Improving by 1% each day compounds to roughly 37 times the starting value over a year. Declining by 1% each day leaves roughly 0.03. This is not a promise about personal progress; it is a reminder that small actions repeated daily can have more impact than we think.
I started working at 20 and founded Gratitude Design in 2015. What brought me here was not talent alone, but doing familiar things better each time: listening to clients, supervising work on site and making content whose earliest pieces barely reached anyone.
And keeping going does not mean never resting. Take a break when you need one. Just do not stop learning.
Thank you
Thank you to the assistant dean, Ajarn Sira and Sripatum University for the opportunity, and to all the business students who listened, talked and shared their ideas.
I did not want anyone to leave thinking they needed a huge business, fame or success on someone else’s schedule. Whether you work for a company, run a business or do both, you can create value. Start by understanding the people you want to help, then practise doing one thing well enough to truly help them.
A good life may not arrive on a fixed schedule, but we can choose small steps that bring us closer to it each day.
Life can be designed. Start with yourself.
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To invite Give to speak, lecture or lead a workshop on design, materials and creating business value, explore the topics and formats at Education & Speaker