In this episode, Gail Doby welcomes Ann Feldstein, a 25-year industry veteran and the force behind Moxie Marketing. Ann reflects on her journey from working on the De Beers “Diamonds are Forever” campaign to serving as Vice President of Communications at Kravet before launching her own agency ten years ago.

The heart of the discussion focuses on Ann’s keynote research into why women often harbor judgment toward one another. They explore internalized misogyny—the unconscious adoption of sexist attitudes—and how it manifests in everything from holiday clean-up expectations to judgments about makeup and parenting. Ann also breaks down the “fairy tale complex,” explaining how classic stories like Cinderella taught young girls to view other women primarily as competition for male attention. Tune in for this conversation that is always relevant, but perhaps even more so in the female-dominated industry of interior design.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full show notes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s14e10-shownotes

Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors.

And it’s so exciting to have you on the Creative Genius podcast and I am really happy to have you here today.

Well, thank you so much for inviting me to be on. I’m a huge fan of The Pearl Collective and your podcast, and I’m so honored to be on.

Well, thank you for being here. Well, I want to talk to you a little bit about your background and how you got into the industry to begin with.

Great. This month is actually 25 years for me in the industry. I started my career at JWT and I worked on the De Beers Diamonds campaign and that was an interesting time. And then I went to a smaller boutique firm and I worked on other luxury brands. And then I met someone and fell in love and didn’t want to work agency hours.

And I saw that Cravet was looking for a marketing person and I applied and I hit it off with the team and I really liked the family and they offered me a position. And it was such an interesting time for me because it was a real learning curve. And here I thought I was like sort of set in my career and I had this new learning experience. And I fully admit as a marketing person, it probably took me a good year or two to fully understand

the industry works and how best to serve the interior designers. I was at Kravat for 15 years and in 2015 I stepped down as the vice president of communications and I opened Moxie Marketing and we just celebrated 10 years. Yes, 10 years. Time really does fly. At Moxie we work with brands and interior designers, anyone in the interior design space.

We do only take on clients in the interior design space because that is really where my experience is. And I work with brands on marketing and sales. I work with designers on communications plans, of course, PR, events, social media, everything to help designers and brands grow their business.

Hmm, how exciting. Well, and I know you’re working with some people that I happen to know and love well. So that’s really exciting. And I’m really happy to know you because I think in this industry, it’s really important to have people that grasp what we do and understand the complexities of this business because it is not a normal animal. No.

It is not.

It isn’t. And I think that one of the things that’s so hard is trying to find somebody who can adapt to the changing industry. And I think you have done that really well.

Thank you. I’ve worked really hard at that and trying to understand the nuances of everyone’s business, not just the brands, not just the interior designers. I believe we all play an important part in the ecosystem of interior design. I also think it’s such a special industry. That’s one of the things that I did notice right away when I started 25 years ago. People were so willing to help each other.

And it really touched me in that regard. And then at Cravet, I got to work on the Ronald McDonald House project. And it was just wonderful to see all of my colleagues come together, competitors, other designers. Everyone came together for this really special cause. And I think designers and the industry in general are just incredibly giving.

Mm-hmm. I love that part of the industry too. Well, let’s talk about you a little bit. I’d love to know what your guilty pleasure is.

what is my guilty pleasure? I probably have a few. I love a day just sitting on the sofa with my dogs and the fire going and some good food and good Netflix and cozy pajamas and maybe a nice cocktail or reading a good book. That’s definitely a guilty pleasure of mine. I’m a huge foodie. So I don’t know if I would say that’s a guilty pleasure. To me, food is life.

Yeah, I do enjoy my food and I love trying new food and cooking and all the things related to food. I even like grocery shopping.

that’s, that’s alien to me. I haven’t been in a grocery store in years. My husband does all the grocery.

I do love it, not at the holidays. And I like to be there as soon as they open first thing in the morning, but I do enjoy grocery shopping.

is so interesting. I’ve never heard anybody say that. There’s something wrong with you,

I know I don’t love regular shopping unless I’m traveling but grocery shopping it’s my happy place

my gosh, that’s so funny. I don’t even cook anymore, so I don’t relate at all. All right, well, who would you take with you to a desert island, say you’re stranded?

Well, I definitely would bring my dogs. And then, you know, I think there’s a few different people. My best friend, because we could talk about anything till the cows come home. I’d love it if it was my mom, but she’s not with us anymore. You know, someone that’s interesting and then someone that would help me not go stir crazy as someone with ADHD who’s always on the move, even though I’m sure I love my relaxing time, someone that could keep me sane.

I love that. Well, let’s talk about one of your favorite topics. you had come to us a while back and had mentioned that you’d love to be speaking on this topic. And at the time, we weren’t ready to have a conversation yet because we we already had everything booked for the podcast. But I think it’s such an important topic. And I think that today, let’s talk about why women are so hard on women.

And I’m so curious, what prompted your passion for this topic?

So it was really interesting. A couple of years ago, I was having dinner with one of my girlfriends and she’s a mentor to me. She’s older than I am. She is also in marketing. And since I met her, ironically through a crab, it when I first started, we just clicked and she has been a terrific mentor to me and a dear friend. And she comes over on Christmas Eve. She spends Christmas Eve with my family. And a couple of years ago, we were celebrating her birthday at dinner and another friend of hers had

come by for drinks. And I just kind of casually mentioned that I think women are really hard on other women. And the two of them did not take it well. And the other woman, the friend, was actually in the process of being let go from her job. And she was putting it all on a woman and the reason she was being fired. And their reaction was so strong and took me by such surprise.

I really, it kind of just gave me pause and I started looking into it. I just started doing research. As I mentioned, I do have ADHD. So, you know, my brain gets something and it just keeps going. And then about six months later, I was talking to a friend of mine, Sarah Kravitz actually, and I told her about what had happened. And she was the one that said to me, you know, and you’re really passionate about this. Like, I think there’s something you could do with it.

A couple of months later then she invited me to kick off Cravett’s Women’s Initiative Network. And it goes out to all of the female employees. It’s a resource group for them for if they need support, coaching, anything like that. And I was their inaugural keynote speaker. And I put together a deck and it was supported by research from Harvard Business Review, Psychology Today, you name it.

it wasn’t just my thoughts and opinions and it was such a great presentation and the women, were women in the building and then, everybody else was remote because as you know, they have showrooms and, and spaces all around. and once the presentation ended, like the women there, they stayed and they just wanted to talk about it and talk about it. And it was really eye opening.

And even since then, I’ve just gathered so much more research about it. And I do think it’s a very important topic because there’s something called internalized misogyny. I think a lot of women and myself at times have had it and we don’t realize it. And it could be as simple as, you grew up and your mom told you never to leave the house without makeup on.

I’m not a huge makeup person. My mother didn’t wear a lot of makeup except for lipstick. And I guess I followed in her footsteps. But for some people, if they feel that if they were taught you shouldn’t leave the house without makeup and they see a woman who’s left the house without makeup, there’s judgment there. Something as simple as that. And that’s obviously a very simple example. And even giving that example, the amount of women that said to me in the presentation, like,

Interesting.

my God, my mom told me never to leave the house without lipstick or my mom told me I, you know, I should always have my hair done or something like that. And obviously that’s, you know, kind of at the basic level. But another example is the holidays come up. How often do you see that the dinner wraps up and the men retreat to watch TV or play football and the women clean up? And if one or two women don’t clean up and they go to relax or they go do something,

there’s often judgment and the judgment is typically from the other women more so than from the men.

Interesting. hmm, okay. So that is so fascinating. It’s so funny that you say you shouldn’t leave the house without makeup and my mother would say, don’t leave the house with makeup on. didn’t want us to wear makeup when we were growing up. And I think because I grew up in such a progressive household with a mother who was very, I don’t know, she was very different and she was quite a bit older.

And so she, I remember seeing pictures of her wearing jeans in the 20s and 30s. She was born in 1913. So it very, I can’t even believe that 112 years old, but is what she would have been. But she was just so anti all of that. And she was such a, I guess a feminist at an early age. She did not wear makeup. She did not wear a bra.

She did not do a lot of things. So she was, oh my gosh, she was so anti having these rules, even though she was really in a more traditional roles of female. So this is really interesting to me because I really hadn’t thought about this in recent years. And it’s probably because I’ve had such a different background or I had a mother who had a different opinion growing up.

Which I think is incredible. I mean for my my mom she was in some ways very traditional and other ways Bucked tradition like she always told me never rely on a man for money always have your own money and Margaret always work But at the same time she always she was a caregiver and she taught me to be a caregiver Makeup wasn’t important to her, but she did always you know when she was younger wear her lipstick and she always liked to look neat and tidy

And there’s no doubt that she was my idol, is my idol, will always be the most important person in my life, but she definitely treated me differently than she treated my brother. The expectation on me as a woman was significantly harder, I should say, than what my brother’s was. And, you know, we did talk about it in her later years. We did talk about it. And, you know, she was one of seven and

That was how she grew up. She left school. My mom had me later in life. So she had me at 44 years old and she was born in 1926. And when she was 14, she had to leave school to take care of her younger siblings. And so that’s where she got her caregiver part about her. And she grew up in Scotland in a very traditional way where the women did all the work and they did all the cooking and the cleaning. And the men tended the fires.

whatever. And that was, it was how I grew up. And until I got old enough to be like, hey, this isn’t like, I don’t understand, like, why is this expected of me? And it’s not expected of my brother. And then because of that, did just start to, it’s just something I’ve always kind of paid attention to. And now work really hard to

not judge other women if their choices are different than mine.

Hmm, really interesting. Well, I’m just so fascinated by all this. And first of all, we have so much more in common than I realized. My mother had me when she was 42 and a half. So she was much older when she had both my sister and me, and I’m the youngest. But I don’t know. It’s so interesting because I didn’t grow up with the traditional background in some ways, but in some ways I did.

I think I was very conflicted growing up and I really have never thought about the topic the way you’re bringing it to me today. So I’m fascinated to know some more. Now I was listening or looking at this quote that you shared from the Barbie movie. Women hate women and men hate women. It’s the only thing we agree on. Do you really believe that’s true?

think it’s true to some extent, I do. And there’s a lot of research to support it. The Barbie movie was such a great example of women being overlooked. mean, that was the most successful movie. That year in particular, the economy thrived thanks to Beyonce, Taylor Swift, and the Barbie movie. And women didn’t get the credit that they deserve. The director didn’t get any credit.

the lead actress didn’t get any credit like where they didn’t they weren’t nominated for Oscars. I should be more specific in regards to the Barbie movie. And even with the success of the Barbie movie, there was a quote in I think Rolling Stone. It was like, we should make more movies about toys. No, we should make more movies about women. It wasn’t that the Barbie movie was successful because it was about Barbie. was it was successful because it was about women and

As a marketer, know, I look at everything from a marketing lens and something that has always stuck out to me that really aggravated me. And I would say I didn’t have the words or the tools to articulate it correctly is we shame young girls for their fandom of the Jonas Brothers or Taylor Swift or whomever, but middle-aged grown men will lose their minds if their sports team doesn’t win. They’ll spend thousands of dollars.

on tickets, they will wear the same socks or whatever their suspicions are. And that’s completely acceptable behavior by a 45-year-old man. But we shame young girls who are excited to see Taylor Swift or the Jonas Brothers. It’s the same thing to me. And that’s the way society and the media portray things. And I think we’re incredibly hard on young women.

I think we’re incredibly hard on women in general, but young women, or let me rephrase this, girls that are just coming into their own and learning to enjoy and like things and are excited about that. I feel that there’s a, like, you we diminish it instead of embracing it.

Well, talk to me about the fairy tale complex. How is that manifested as self in society and tell us what that really is.

So again, that was something I did a lot of research and just off the top of your head, some of the most notable ones, Cinderella, Snow White. It’s all about, mean, Cinderella is a great example. The stepmother and the stepdaughters don’t like Cinderella because she’s too pretty. And the whole story is, you know, because the prince likes Cinderella. So the messaging that young girls receive is that other women are competition. And

at my age, that was a lot of the messaging growing up. well, that one’s really pretty. So she’s going to get all the boys or she’s going to get all the attention. And, the fairy tales reflect that they’re rarely about for women or for girls, excuse me, they’re rarely about friendship and camaraderie and coming together. But the messaging for boys is different. But for girls, it’s always someone

The girl has something and they don’t like her because she has something where, whether it’s looks or talent or something. And then they’re envious of her. And that’s the messaging that these young girls are receiving when they’re being read fairy tales or watching Disney movies.

Interesting. And you think that’s true even today in some of newer movies.

think it’s less true or they’ve, they’re starting to explore other storylines. Like there’s the, the one that I love from Disney is the young Scottish girl and it’s all about her strength and her individuality. But I mean, that is a newer movie. I think that’s within the past 10 years. So if you look at, the, the, I don’t know if you would say the traditional ones are the ones that have been around for decades, you know, Snow White, it’s the woman that

wants to take her and you know, it’s always about another woman being the competition. And oftentimes a young woman, a young girl being the competition.

You know, it’s interesting too, because I think back to some of the different movies that I’ve seen over the decades, and some of those were about mean girls. And there are so many examples of the mean girls, and I’ve experienced that growing up myself. And I still to this day occasionally have instances where people behave that way. And I’m just stunned at that, at how cruel people can be.

feel the same way. I think, I think right now in particular, we live in a society where it’s becoming more and more acceptable to be rude and hard on women. We don’t need to get political, but we know that it’s happening at the top. So people feel very freely to disrespect and be rude to women. One of the things that really, really annoys me is when you call someone a Karen, because I think it’s just a way to keep women quiet, right?

if a woman is complaining, if she wants to talk to a manager or she’s unhappy with someone or something or a service, instead of being like, well, let’s hear what the woman has to say, perhaps it’s valid, we call her a Karen. And it, to me, it’s just another way to silence women. Women should be able to speak if they’re unhappy, if they feel mistreated, you know, do some people take it to the next level and take advantage? Of course that happens with men and women. But I think

we’re so quick to call women a Karen or, you know, talk about why they’re complaining. And to me, that’s just silencing women. And I think we should be doing the opposite.

Yeah, well, that’s a very judgmental thing to put a label on that. And I haven’t known a lot of Karens and I like them. Yeah. And so that’s annoying to me that we have really made that a negative name too.

Me too.

I agree. Yeah. I do. I think for most women, you know, you have your group of girlfriends or your support. And I do think most women are great. Right. Let’s let me put it that way. And that’s why this topic I think is important. It’s asking you to take a step back and say, do I judge that person for their choices, whether it’s because they don’t wear makeup or they didn’t get married or they only had one child or they had three or four.

children. while I’m not a mom, I do see a lot of the judgment around mothers. Did you breastfeed? you went back to work so quickly. you’re staying home. Like, it doesn’t seem like anything women do is the right choice to someone anyway.

Sure, Well, yeah, and maybe because I don’t have kids either. And for me, I’ve always made that decision to, for the most part, I’ve run a business for many, many years. So it’s almost like that’s a negative thing, but I made that choice very deliberately. And it’s interesting, but I’m sure that that has gotten some quiet judgment from a lot of people too, because that was not my choice to have a family.

I think it’s very easy to put women in a box. she’s not a mother or they didn’t have children. It’s just, I think another way to divide us. think women are incredibly smart. They are natural leaders. They know how to handle a crisis. And I think what makes women different than most men is that women, when making decisions, they think about how it’ll affect everybody in their life, not just themselves. So when women make decisions, it’s almost like a

collective, like this is what’s best for everyone, whether it’s a work situation, a family situation. Like I think they see a larger picture versus just saying this is a good decision for me. And I think men have can have a very singular focus. And, and if you look at the countries that have female leadership, they are thriving and they’re they’re doing very well. And I

And this goes to the topic where I think if women could support other women, I think we would just have a much better society. And I think we could do more. I think we could rule the world to be quite honest with you, but let’s start with our local governments.

Well, that’s a good point. You had a quote that you were sharing in your deck about America, for error, saying something that I think is true and it’s sad at the same time. And she said, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong. And that statement is very unsettling to me. And

We both have seen a lot of people struggling with imposter syndrome and perfectionism. That’s just something I see all the time in coaching. Why do think this is so prevalent and how do we break this cycle?

Well, I think one, that quote was fantastic and really spoke to me. And I think a lot of it has to do with women and our image. Let’s start with that. mean, the messaging that I received from when I was a little girl is I’m not thin enough. I’m not pretty enough. I’m not tall enough. I’m not blonde enough. I’m not enough of anything. Right. And no matter how hard I work, I’m never I’m never going to look like, you know, growing up, it was Farrah Fawcett or

Heather Locklear or insert whomever they were. I mean, honestly, industries would collapse if women started to love themselves as they are right now versus wanting to be thinner, wanting to not have wrinkles. And I’m guilty of all of it. So I’m not saying I’m above anything. But I do think a lot of women suffer from imposter syndrome. And I think if you’re bombarded from when you’re born with images of something you don’t look like or is not obtainable,

it’s hard to feel truly confident.

Yeah, it’s true. It’s interesting too, because our industry is mostly women. And I have some of the most amazing women as clients. And when I look at the people that come into our community and see how incredibly capable they are, and how they’re running amazing businesses, and our goal is always to help them be better at that business and

to have the ability to have a legacy and to live financially free. Those things are our goals for our clients. And when I see the level of skill and compassion and care and intelligence that these women have, it just gives me lot of confidence about hopefully the next generation will also pick up on that and take that further because we need a big change.

I do agree with that. And I love that your team is three strong women and of course, and one strong man. And you’re helping these women, mostly women. I know you also have male clients grow their business and be successful and have a succession planned. It’s one of the things that I was surprised at a couple of years ago. As you know, I work with Duane Bergman and he did a little bit of a reverse.

succession plan. And I was talking to some designers in Paris and they were all women and they all had thriving businesses. none of them had a succession plan in place. And one of the women I was speaking to was in her 70s. And I’m like, you’ve built this amazing business for decades, and you’re just going to let it go. And I was like, well, first of all, you can have passive revenue, right, right there. And then you’re going to go into

your retirement with passive revenue, you’ve created a brand and that will continue to grow and that can be your legacy. And they just hadn’t thought that way. They just thought this was a business that they created and when they were ready to retire, the business would close. And that was so sad for me. And I ended up giving a talk at ADAC about succession planning. And, you know, it’s something that I

I talk about more and I know you talk about with your clients. And I do think it’s a very important topic. And I think it’s something that not everyone has thought about or knows how to do. And they maybe don’t even realize why having a succession plan is important to them.

Yes, I agree with that. And we have helped six companies exit so far. And we have worked with companies that are starting to build their succession plan. And that is so critical. And you have to do that whether you are 70 or whether you’re 30 building your business, you should be thinking about that future and about how you build that. So I think it’s important to think about that. We can have a whole other podcast talking about succession planning.

Let’s talk about why you think women are so hesitant to support other women. And I see the opposite too. I see a lot of people willing to support.

I do agree with that. Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you.

no worries. Yeah. And what’s interesting too is that some of these people that I’m working with right now, there’s still a little bit of hesitance. Even though they’re willing to help each other, there’s always a little bit of hesitance about, I can’t give it all away because if I do, then they’re afraid they’re going to lose something. So what are they afraid of losing?

Well, again, I think it goes back to the messaging that they’ve received their entire life in is that other women are competition. It started as other girls are competition. And so it takes a lot of unlearning. And I include myself in that. And a lot of it is having the attitude of there’s more than enough business for everyone. And the right client will find you or you’ll find the right client.

When I was leaving Cravet and starting on my own, Elizabeth Blitzer of Blitzer & Co. was very helpful to me and she’s terrific. She’s just fantastic. What an amazing woman that she is. And she never once held back. She gave me everything I needed to be successful. She gave me a copy of her contract. She referred people to me and I said to her, like, are you sure that it’s like, it’s not saturated and there’ll be enough work? And she said, Anne,

there’s more than enough business for everyone. And to me, she was confident enough to know that we come to the table with different skill sets and not everyone that’s right for me is going to be right for her and vice versa. And, I’ve, I’ve tried to always be that way. And of course there’s times where I have my doubt or the imposter syndrome and, and such. but it is really sort of like a mindset of just because someone has something,

doesn’t make you less of a person. Or it doesn’t take away from what I’m doing. If someone signs another client and I didn’t or something along those lines.

Well, the other thing that I think is interesting, and this is very true, is women do tend to compare themselves to others. And I don’t think that’s just women. I do think most people compare themselves to other people. And I wonder why that is so wired into our behavior.

I think a lot of it has to do from big businesses wanting to profit. If you’re continuing to be insecure, you’re going to keep purchasing things to be able to feel good about it. I mean, we do live in a capitalist society and we’re always looking for the next thing. even now there’s little baboos, if I’m even pronouncing that correctly, that there’s a whole group of not children, adults that need these, in my opinion, ugly stuffed animals on their back.

That’s just my personal opinion. you know, I think it’s just a part of our conditioning in society. I don’t think I think society benefits when we’re not confident, because then we know that we’re confident we don’t need the la boo boo or the latest bag or the latest anything. And that’s not that’s not good for business.

So interesting, yes. That is a very interesting philosophy because if it is really about commercialism then why are we falling into that and becoming so enamored with whatever is out on social media or maybe in advertising, why are we falling for that?

I think in some capacity, it speaks to us, right? So whether it’s even the people on the other end that are like, I’m vegan or I don’t, know, like to the extremes, it’s identifying and possibly even belonging to something, right? Even if it’s not the masses, it’s something on the smaller side. And it’s not easy to overcome. And as a marketer, the amount of times I fall for marketing,

is, you know, I and sometimes it’s just because I’m like, wow, that’s really great marketing and it got me and then there’s other times where it’s like, nope, I just fell for it. Hook line and sinker. I’ve gotten better and I’m trying to be very conscious of what I spend and where I spend now just because of where our country is now. But it’s it’s not easy. And as I said, everything I had said earlier about, you know, our hair, our nails are

Not wanting wrinkles, all of that. I feel that pressure as well. Not to the extreme that some do where they have plastic surgery or they really loathe themselves. I’m not that extreme. But, you know, I do still dye my hair. I still get my nails done. I wear makeup. Not that often, but I wear makeup.

Sure

Well, I think if it’s motivated because you just want to feel and look your best, that’s one thing. But if you’re doing it to compare yourself to others or because you feel less than if you’re not doing those things, then that’s a concern. So it really, to me, has to do with the motivation. Is it internal or external? If you’re looking for external validation of who you are because of what you do and what you wear, how you behave, what you belong to, all those different things.

then that’s like a bottomless pit. You can never, ever get enough if you’re looking for external validation.

I do agree with that. And that’s why I think this topic is so important for women. In addition to being able to come together and having the support of each other, I think it does help you realize, are you just looking for external validation? Are you able to get that validation internally? Like, that’s another reason why I think it’s such an important topic. Because if you realize just how much you are marketed to, to not like yourself, I think that helps you like yourself.

when you’re like, hey, I’m actually not so bad. My confidence level now that I’m over 50, I wish I had this confidence when I was younger. I wish I had it. And I guess part of it has to do with age where you really don’t care what other people think. But I wish I had the confidence just 10 years ago that I have now.

Well, I don’t think you can have that confidence without having many experiences that give you the, maybe that assurance that you’re on the right track. But the reality is too, we have to make a lot of mistakes to get to where we are. And if you don’t make mistakes, then you really aren’t pushing yourself enough to test to see what your capacity is. So

true.

I just really hope that all the people listening will really think about the fact that it’s really about how you feel about yourself that matters. It’s not what other people think about you, because if you take that in and let other people hurt your feelings or make you feel bad about yourself, that is a choice that you don’t have to let that bother you. You can let that go. And I think it’s really important for us to

encourage people to be self motivated and self, not self judging, but really just bolster yourself. And remember that you’ve got enough and you are enough and maybe you’re not perfect, but you’re learning every day.

You made such a good point. And I think especially for women, we’re not told that it’s okay to make mistakes or fail. I know I wasn’t, I was not, it had to be perfect. It had to be right. The first time failure or mistakes just wasn’t widely accepted. And I even had a supervisor that said, I don’t, I don’t do anything unless I know it’ll be successful. Like, and

And that shaped me. now I’m much more like, yes, okay, if I make a mistake, I’m a human being. I’ve made a mistake. I will learn from it. Most importantly, learn from it and then correct it and move on. Nothing is most likely, it’s not earth shattering or life changing. It’s just a mistake. And I think for women, and I did actually just read an article on this,

Women are so hesitant to make a mistake that they don’t put themselves in a position to make a mistake. So they’re not taking the risk.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, and risk is what it takes to be successful in life. And also, if you’re an entrepreneur, and we happen to have a lot of entrepreneurs that are in our community, but you cannot do it the safe way. You have to make mistakes.

I agree. And I think that’s a message that needs to be spread loud and wide, especially for women. And then I think you just you learn so much from your mistakes. I do remember someone saying to me or actually maybe it was something I read it was you learn more from your mistakes than you do from your successes.

Sure, you do. And they’re painful. It’s not fun to go through and make mistakes. But by the same token, if you’re not making a mistake, you’re playing it way too safe.

That I do agree. So I think that’s messaging that women do need to hear more of. That it’s okay to make a mistake, it’s okay to take a risk, and it’s okay to have egg on your face, learn from it and move on.

Sure, absolutely. Well, I love this quote of yours where you said, our strength as women lies within the collective. If women joined together, we could rule the world.

I that. you know, for me and the really tough parts of my life, it’s been my friendships and my family and the women that have really supported me. And if you think back, you know, whether it’s someone’s having a baby or someone’s had a loss, the women are the ones that show up with the casseroles or the ice cream or the margaritas or whatever it is to support.

Why I feel this topic is so important is just talking about it. I think it gives people pause to be like, you know, maybe I am too harsh on, on someone or, you know, maybe I can stop doing that and realize someone’s life can look different than mine. And it’s not a competition.

Yeah, definitely. I want to go back to one thing you said a few minutes ago and that is about perfectionism. And I grew up with a mother who was a perfectionist and I struggle with it and I try really hard to break that habit. And I catch myself frequently still. And I just want to remind people that it’s about being as good as you can be for yourself, not being perfect because there is no such thing as perfect.

and somebody will out-perfect you and they will challenge you because they think that they are even more perfect than you are. So it’s not about competition with other people. It’s really about being who you are and being the best you can be.

I agree with that. And one thing I do tell my clients and some of them are good with it and others don’t love it. But I always say done is better than perfect because oftentimes, oftentimes people get so caught up and they, they want it to be perfect that it never gets done. It’s, it’s like the book, the alchemist. I don’t know if you read that book. That was just such a great book to me because it is so true that you’re, so scared of not.

achieving your goal that you don’t even attempt to achieve your goal. And I think it’s the same with perfectionism. You can get so caught up in it. And so I do say done is better than perfect.

Mm-hmm, for sure. Well, this has been a fascinating conversation. We could talk for hours about this topic, but let’s pick about maybe three things that you think are worthy of mentioning again, or at least some concepts and ideas that you’d like to share with our listeners.

I think, as I had said, to pause and give consideration. Like, I hard on, if it’s a mother to a daughter, do I expect more of my daughter than I do of my sons? Is it okay for the men to go watch football after the turkey dinner and the women are expected to clean up? I mean, that’s just a great example. And that was my lived experience. I love my brother dearly and he’s a great man, but it was my lived experience that the expectations

for me were very different than they were for my brother. So I think that’s one to start with within your own family. And then I think it’s, you know, just because a woman has made different life choices, it doesn’t make one better or less than the other. And when it comes to parenting, just because someone does something differently than you, doesn’t, again, we don’t all have to be cookie cutter. So I think it’s just acknowledging and also

The other thing to acknowledge is society benefits if we believe we’re all competing against each other for something. And if we can get rid of that and really come together and support each other, I do believe that we can rule the world. And I believe we can change our neighborhoods and change our communities if women supported other women in a way that just allows them to feel good, to thrive, to come to them if they have a problem, to not feel judged.

I mean, to not feel judged, think is huge to know that you have a safe space to go to. So I think that’s important. And also the media has a lot to do with it. As I said earlier in the interview, just an example of shaming young girls for their fandom of who they enjoy, but it’s socially acceptable for men to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on their favorite sports team and punch a wall if their team, you know, I know that’s extreme, but you know,

really have a strong reaction if their team loses. It’s the same thing. So don’t shame the little girl because she loves Taylor Swift or I’m sorry, I don’t know any of the new pop stars names, but Sabrina Carpenter, any of them. Let her enjoy her fandom. Let her enjoy what she enjoys.

Mm-hmm. Right. Well, very fascinating conversation, Anne. Thank you so much for bringing that to us and sharing that with our listeners. And I will be very interested in hearing people’s reactions to this. So thank you for being here.

Well, thank you so much for having me on and thank you for allowing me to talk about a topic that’s so very important to me. And I admire you so much and thank you and have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Thank you.

You too.

This week on the Creative Genius podcast, Gail Doby sits down with Danae Branson, founder of Elite Design Assistants, to discuss the transformative power of virtual support for interior design firms. Danae shares how she transitioned from the financial sector to design and eventually recognized a massive gap in the market for high-quality, specialized virtual assistance.

With a team of approximately 110 assistants—primarily based in the U.S.—Elite Design Assistants provides everything from 3D renderings and CAD drafting to administrative support and senior design roles. Danae and Gail discuss the logistics of hiring remote senior-level talent, the common pitfalls of poor communication, and the “help me, help you” mindset required to make outsourcing a profitable success.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full show notes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s14e9-shownotes

Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors.

Well, welcome to the Creative Genius podcast, Danae. And I love referring you all the time and we do this a lot. Your company is called Elite Design Assistance. So I’d really love to know your background. How did you get started in the interior design business?

Yeah, so I actually started years ago, like in the early 2000s. And I just was self started kind of interior design. My husband was a contractor, but I kind of paid the bills in the financial industry. So it was, I don’t know, 2006, I actually started a virtual agency in the financial industry. By 2017, I wanted to get back into design and just to networking with different designers.

that I was talking about, this is how, like my day job, so to speak. They were just curious why I did not create a virtual agency for interior designers. And so I decided I could probably do that. And when I started doing it, I had no idea it would blow up as big as it did, but that became my full-time job. And I no longer was in the financial industry and I no longer was an actual interior designer. So.

I just run Elite Design Assistance and I love it. It’s super fun. I love helping interior designers, but I guess I just had a unique set of skills that kind of got me to where I am today.

Well, tell us a little bit about your firm and what kind of services you provide and what is a typical thing for someone to come to you for.

Sure. So we provide all sorts of services, basically anything that can be done virtually. So designers, we like to match them with virtual design assistants who have the experience, expertise that they need. So we do a lot of outsourcing with CAD drafting, 3D renders, admin sourcing, even senior designer position is becoming very popular right now.

Like I said, basically anything that can be done virtually, we want to be able to help the designers.

Well, absolutely. I know that I bet I’ve given you 30 referrals so far. I kind of lost count at this point, but a lot of people. And in fact, I was talking to somebody today about you. yeah.

Thank you. Yeah, I really appreciate it. And I love your clients. They are so great to work with. I love helping them. Yes.

They are.

Well, how many are on your team?

We have right around 110 right now. Wow. Yeah, so located across the US. I always tell people 99.9 % of them are US based. I have a couple over in Europe, you know, just due to either military spouse or you know some other reason they’re over there temporarily. They usually are back, but occasionally people are OK with that time difference.

We have worked with one of your graphics people that I is in Spain.

Yes, yes you have, yeah.

And she’s great. So we’ve had really good success with that. So we know because we actually use your services too.

Yep, absolutely.

Yeah, so you said that the common requests are a lot of CAD and you said a lot more senior designers. So why do you think that is the case?

You know, I don’t know, it does ebb and flow. We kind of notice, you know, throughout the year and throughout the years, it’s certain services. I think right now everyone’s just getting super busy with projects. And those are the easiest things maybe to outsource right now is let’s get this CAD drafting going. Let’s get the 3D render going. Admin, a lot of people right now are coming to us for presentations, proposals, invoicing.

And I think it’s just everyone is so busy. And for those designers in particular, I think those were the easiest things for them to outsource immediately.

Yeah, and I think one thing though that I think is a little confusing and I have talked to some of the people that I’ve referred to you and hiring a senior, they are struggling with how to do that remotely. What are some tips that you could share, especially in a key role like that?

Yes.

Right. So absolutely. we actually are creating, I wonder if I even have it up still, we are actually creating a document right now about the steps and how to outsource to a senior designer and like some of the best things to do. Like, obviously they can offer anything from the space planning CAD documentation, the FFNE sourcing specifications, all of that. But some of the things we say is, you know, you really need to have that good communication in place.

whether it’s a weekly video call or whatever that may be. But we are actually creating a document as we speak today. In fact, I was going back and forth with one of my seniors about making sure that it’s very clear so that when someone comes to us now wanting to hire a senior designer, we’re going to give them this document first so that they can look through it and know exactly how they’re going to work with the senior designer so that when they’re interviewing that person,

They can spend more time on the actual interviewing of the person and their skill set instead of asking them, how are we going to work together? But basically it’s just, you know, those video calls, staying in communication, looping your senior designer in on your processes. And then they’re going to be able just to kind of lead the way as far as how they’re going to be able to help those designers and what they can. Obviously they can do everything virtually.

But so that’s something we’re working on as we speak right now. So we should have that done fairly quickly.

Yeah, well, and especially that’s an important role and you want somebody who can hit the ground running. However, they’re not going to hit the ground in your city. Right? Because they aren’t there. So you’re have to have processes to make sure that if there are jobsite visits, somebody internally is gonna have to do that.

Yep, absolutely. Yep.

Well, what are some of the things that people should know as a firm owner about outsourcing? What are the top tips on how to have a great relationship with your VA?

Sure. The number one thing I do tell people is you do have to have some sort of organization around it. Occasionally we will get a request from somebody and they’re a little bit all over the place and I understand that because they’re overwhelmed and I get that. So we try to get them to just get a little bit more organized with the tasks they’re looking to outsource, maybe even prioritize those tasks. Because a lot of the people on our team do obviously, unless you’re hiring a senior designer, people tend to niche down.

into the area of the industry they excel in the most. So if you’re needing CAD drafting and you’re needing admin and studio designer, that could look like two separate individuals. But we also just let them know that, you know, the most important thing is to just, you know, have that idea of what it is that you’re wanting to outsource a priority and then we can help you from there.

So like we can get you started with one person if you need another person down the road for additional services. That’s how we’re helping people build their teams virtually right now. And so, you know, that’s been working out really well.

What are some of the common mistakes that you see people make that outsource?

Right. I would say again, that lack of communication, they maybe hire someone, throw everything their way, and then all of a sudden you don’t hear from them. And I’ll hear from a VDA like, I’ve emailed them three times. I haven’t heard from them in a week. I would say that’s one of the most, you know, and communication is huge. The other thing we see occasionally is I like to call kind of flipping the script.

Maybe they hired somebody for a specific thing and then as soon as they worked with them, they decided that’s not the service they wanted anymore, but expected that exact VDA to do something completely different that maybe wasn’t in their wheelhouse. Maybe it was going to take them a little bit more time and in the beginning the designer was okay with that. But then upon seeing, okay, this isn’t going to be a fit, you know.

If you’re going to hire someone for CAD, but then need them to suddenly do invoicing, you know, we, need to have a conversation with you again about somebody who’s going to be a much better fit. Most VDAs, honestly, they’re going to be honest and say, Hey, I’m, that’s not in my wheelhouse or I could do this for you, but it might take me a little bit more time. So it’s not very common, but occasionally we do see that where somebody changes their mind on what they want us outsource. And that’s totally fine.

I just want to make sure that we’re getting them the exact right fit because we want this to be cost effective for our designer clients for sure.

Yes, and it’s not, I think you’re absolutely right. If somebody is not organized and they don’t clearly communicate and they don’t have specific details, it’s virtually impossible to do that.

Yes, it is. And I also noticed certain people maybe just aren’t quite ready to let go. That’s the other thing. Like you have to be open to this process, trust the process. You have to be open to allowing somebody else to come in and help you. If you can’t do that, obviously it makes it extremely difficult. If you still just want to have your hands in it and you know.

not trust the process, then maybe you’re not quite ready to outsource. Everyone has their own comfort level with outsourcing and we just want to make sure that again, we’re doing the very best for our clients, but they have to allow us to help them. It’s that help me, help you kind of thing.

Well, and for sure, I completely understand where you’re coming from. Our company has been in business since March of 2008. We’re coming up on 18 years and we have been virtual for 17 years. So our whole company is operating as a virtual company and I can’t imagine ever going back the other way.

Same, yeah.

Well, I suppose there are times too when somebody should be thinking about hiring a permanent hire versus a virtual. So talk to me about that. What is the deciding point for that?

Right, so a lot of times designers do come to us and ask kind of the same question. So I tell them if you really need somebody who’s going to be available 40 hours a week, more like a full time employee, obviously you need to hire, you know, somebody in-house. You can hire an employee that’s remote, obviously, but you really need to maybe look at hiring an employee, somebody that you really need ongoing all the time.

Most of our clients come to us because they don’t want to have to worry about paying somebody full time. It’s not that maybe they hire somebody through me and it’s possible somebody could work 40 hours in a week, but it’s not a consistent 40 hours by any means. We offer our contracting is as needed, no minimums, but yet we are matching for long-term relationships. So if you are somebody who’s needing help,

but you don’t need full time and you’re just really wanting to make sure that you have somebody available to help you as you need them. I would say outsource to a freelancer, you know? But if you do need a dedicated person to your design studio, then definitely look at doing the in-house or the employee route for sure.

Well, I was just talking with one of my clients that has been working with you too and I told her I said, and she said, well, should I just stop the looking for the full time person? said, no, absolutely not. It could take you six to nine months. Use today’s team to fill in in between until you find that right hire. But for right now, do both because you need both things in place.

Yes, absolutely. And we do help a lot of clients with that exact same thing. And I did have a client once who ended up using somebody on my team for 18 months because it took them that long to find the right hire. And you don’t, if you have us and it’s working, then use us and take your time to spend, you know, take or spend the time, excuse me, to find the exact right person for your studio because it’s going to be huge in the long run.

I can’t agree more because hiring the wrong person is so expensive. It can cost you the cost of their salary. And it is that in terms of the lost time when you have to hire again. So it’s so important to have this flexibility. And we have V.A.s on our team too. And, you know, we use your team for the graphics piece and we have some other people we work with that are part time.

CTO is part time and he has been for gosh how many years 14 years now. Yeah, he’s in there a long time.

Yeah. So yeah, there’s a lot of scenarios where you just need somebody, you know, we’ve worked on maternity leaves, long term, like vacations, or maybe somebody’s ill and is out for an extended period of time, you know. But yeah, we’ve got a lot of different scenarios where we’ve helped people in the interim while they’re trying to, you know, still run a studio, but they don’t have everyone in house that they need at the time.

Yeah, and this is the best way to go about it, especially for small firms, because scaling, you’re not necessarily ready to hire somebody full time right at the beginning. And you might need somebody who’s doing CAD drafting or all the different softwares, maybe Revit. And those people are not needed full time, especially if you’re not, probably until you hit about a million, you probably don’t need somebody full time in that position.

Right. Yeah.

So let’s talk a little bit about ranges of some of the common hires that you might make a virtual system and some of the rates you might expect to pay.

Yeah, currently some of the rates I would say you’re going to be looking around $50 an hour for any of your admin type of services. You know, a lot of times procurement can be included in that as well. Once you get into drafting, render, sourcing, bookkeeping, project management, you’re going to be looking around $75 an hour, I would say. And then for that senior designer service, it’s closer to $95.

An hour bookkeepers, I will say bookkeepers and quick books do charge less than bookkeepers and studio designer, so that’s going to be a little bit different rate. You know you’re going to be around that 75 ish for a bookkeeper in QB, but if you’re looking for studio designer, you’re going to probably be closer to 90 for those. But keepers.

Okay, well that’s good to know. So I wanted everybody to have an idea of what to expect before they reached out to you.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right so let’s talk about I think one of the biggest challenges because if somebody hasn’t worked with someone externally like this how do you onboard a virtual assistant.

Sure. So I would say it depends on the service that you’re looking for. So it’s gonna be a little bit more tedious maybe to onboard somebody who’s doing all of your admin than maybe somebody you’re hiring to do CAD drafting. But so for admin procurement onboarding, it’s best to have a call with them, go through your process, your expectations. That’s the number one thing. I don’t know that all interior designers

Think like these freelancers have a ton of experience. They’ve worked with a lot of designers. All designers run their businesses a little bit differently. We want to make sure that we are doing exactly what you need for your business. So go through your processes with them. Get them into your, let’s say you’re hiring an admin for Studio Designer. You’re going to want to get them into your Studio Designer. You’re going to want to get them into say a sauna, whatever programs and platforms you’re using. We also tell our clients you can,

Absolutely assign them an email address if you’d like for your firm, especially if they’re going to be doing vendor communication, client communication, all that kind of good stuff. Go ahead and do that and then just kind of set up in the beginning if you want to do a weekly check in or however that looks. Again, designers run their companies so differently. Most of them come to us with the process that they’re like, hey, we already have a Monday morning 10 a.m. meeting. Can our, you know,

Admin Assistant hop in on that. Absolutely. We want you to treat them as if you would any other member of your team. If it’s a CAD drafting or more of a creative service, it might be a little bit different onboarding process. You know, still you want them, you want to go through your streamline process, but you also maybe want to show them exactly what your expectations are.

If you’re hiring somebody for those services, we are going to provide portfolios. You’re going to be able to see their work before you even talk to anybody and decide to hire them. But occasionally, maybe your firm does something a tiny bit different and you want your CAD template to look a little bit different or your renders. You know, again, we want to do what’s best for our clients. So just that communication piece and talking through that first, making sure that everyone’s on the same page.

Also, when it comes to the creative side, drafting, renders, you can absolutely ask for an estimate of time upfront. Since we’re doing an hourly rate with no minimums, we still wanna make sure it’s very cost effective for our clients. So before you even decide, yes, I want them to do this CAD project, send them the CAD project and say, hey, can you tell me how much time that’s gonna take you? Because I don’t want my clients to have surprises on their invoicing.

So we try to keep all that communication going so that, you know, I don’t have clients emailing me asking, you know, why their bill was the way it was. I just like them to click the link to pay it and we all go along our merry way.

Yeah, well, that’s the goal is always to give people at the price they want. What are what happens if somebody is not a good fit?

Yeah.

Right. So I tell people to reach out to me immediately. Like if you’re having any issues, let’s say it’s a designer who’s having an issue with the design assistant, reach out to me immediately. Even if you think you want to try to salvage the relationship or continue on, I still want to be aware of what’s going on. I want to see if there’s something I can help. You know, maybe it’s just a miscommunication. Maybe it’s again, every designer runs their firm a little bit differently. I had this happen.

last month where she had hired a CAD drafter and the CAD drafter had done something a certain way with the last 12 designers. So she assumed with this person, we’re going to do it that exact same way because this person didn’t tell her otherwise, well, this designer does things a little bit differently. So it was very minor issue. We got that worked out, but I want to know right away so that we can work it out. And if it’s just not going to be a fit,

Usually it comes down to a personality or communication style, you know, then again, I will get you somebody different. That’s a much better match for you because I don’t want you to have to, you know, continue to move on with somebody and then it gets to the point where it’s just a horrible experience for you and you, you know, no longer want to use the service when you could have come to me weeks prior and let me know that there maybe was an issue. So these things are not common, but

If they do come up, I do want to help immediately. Yeah.

Sure. Yeah, and I don’t think anybody wants to be in that situation, but sometimes people feel bad because they didn’t want to complain.

Yes, they do feel bad and they’re like, I don’t want to feel like I’m tattling. Don’t tell her I said anything. You know, it’s just, you know, they don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. And I understand that. But also at the end of the day, it’s business, you know, and you need a great return on your investment. You need exactly what you expected. And we want to provide that to all of our clients. mean, sure. Yeah.

Yeah, so I tell everyone please come to me. Feel free to come to me. you know, don’t feel bad. Let me know what’s going on. I want to take care of it.

hear you. Well, OK. Well, let’s talk about some of the things people could outsource immediately. What are some of the things that you recommend?

Yeah, so typically some of the best things that you could immediately outsource would be your drafting, your renders. Like right now we are getting a lot of people who just need immediate help. And those are two things, presentations, proposals, sourcing. People are just needing a lot of help with it. They usually, you know, when you come to me, we visit, we figure out what you need. It usually is only a day or two before we could get you someone.

My existing clients, if they need something immediately, we can usually get them something same day or like next morning. But for people who haven’t contracted with us yet, it usually takes a couple of days at least for us to get them set up. Social media is another one. That’s usually a fairly immediate, you know, you could hop right in with somebody and they could help you with your Instagram, Facebook, whatever it is that you’re needing help with.

Well, and I think another area, is really big, which I’ve been having a lot of these conversations is scheduling and administration. So, for some people who get totally overwhelmed, I’ve been referring a lot of people lately to be about virtual assisting for executive level.

Yes, yeah, we do have a lot of that. And again, it could be the scheduling. could be check my emails, draft responses. The designer will go through and see all the drafts and can just click send, send, send, you know, or weed out the junk if you’re somebody who’s starting to get more junk mail or emails, that kind of thing. But yeah, we have a lot of admin requests for sure.

Well, and there’s quite a bit. I know it’s really interesting because we use Slack a lot in our communication internally and the person does scheduling and travel for us will just be observing and paying attention to what’s going on in the other channels and she can pick up on, I think I should reach out and see if I should schedule something for that. And so she’s being proactive about making sure that she’s scheduling something for us without me having to say it. She’s just saying, hey, I’ll go ahead and set that up for you.

Yes, yeah, and that is that proactive piece. We do get requests, like we want to hire somebody who’s very proactive, who can just, you know, be a step ahead, so to speak. Again, we want to make life so much easier for designers, we want to take things off their plates, we want them to continue to grow, scale, or some people just need to take a break and get some time back, you know, from their own business.

this industry, it’s a roller coaster and the work comes and it ebbs and flows and you know, that’s why we created the service the way we did so that we could ebb and flow with our clients.

It makes so much sense to me and I can’t imagine working any other way. We only have, you know, we have what, nine or ten people on staff, but part are virtual and part are full time. So it’s smaller full time and mostly virtual. Specific people doing specific tasks and responsibility.

Yeah.

Yep. And we are, I mean, primarily virtual. That’s what we do. We offer a virtual service. Now, occasionally I do have somebody that’ll ask, do you have anyone that lives local? Cause I do need help. In a rare instance or two, have happened to have people that were local that could help or somebody that lived close enough. Cause what’s happening is some of our clients are working in one state and they’re growing their business to another state.

and maybe they’re in Colorado and also Florida, or you know what I mean? It could be not even states that are real close together and they need somebody in that other state that they don’t live in just to maybe do measuring or things they don’t want to have to fly back and forth for. So occasionally we’ve been able to help that. I envision in the future maybe even offering an additional recruiting service because I’m finding it’s great. Designers are busy.

They are busy and they need help and we want to help in every way we can possible virtually, but in the future I think it would be interesting to see how it might look to have another component to be able to help match with local as well.

Yeah, some people really need those people locally, the boots on the ground, which is one of the hardest parts of this when you’re virtual. Yeah. But I do have one firm I work with and she has all virtual people and has for 10 years. yeah, as a designer, that’s pretty forward thinking that she was. Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Yeah.

It’s not even pre COVID times. It was more difficult for people to wrap their head around the virtual, you know.

COVID made it very good for your business.

Yeah, we did. exploded during COVID. Yeah. And now people see there’s a lot of options to continue to work with virtual, you know, virtual design assistance, continuing moving forward. Yeah.

Yeah, and I think one of the things to remember is if you don’t really need a full time person and your business is cyclical or you’ve got big projects and then you have nothing and depending on what phase they’re in, the nice part is you’re not paying for the overhead of the payroll and people not being productive and people taking vacation or taking breaks and things like that. You really are paying for the work that you need to have done, which is.

very cost effective, even though it’s a higher rate than if you were to pay that person internally.

Right. Yes. Because across the year, it’s going to end up being very cost effective to hire freelance or virtual than an employee. And we do have people that come to us that are like, you know, I don’t have as many projects as I used to. I can’t continue to pay these people to sit here and do nothing. I had to let someone go. But now I’ve got a project in and I need help again. But I know it’s not going to be full time. Can you guys help me? And again, yes, this is why we created

business, we also have people that will hire because they don’t want to continue to grow their waitlist. They’re worried that they’re going to start losing some of those people. And so they hire people from us to get some of these projects going so that they can get ahead of it. And then, you know, they hope that plateaus, however that works. But a lot of times when people hire us, they continue to, to use us because their businesses will continue to grow as well.

Which again, right now you just kind of strike where the iron’s hot, you know, in this industry. If clients are coming to you and you can take them, you know, take them.

Well, I think there’s another really good point here, and that’s the opposite, which is if you are slowing down or you’re taking less business or you want to semi-retire or take a break for a while, you can always refer people to you to hire them as a virtual and have them find other employment rather than just let them go.

Right, yes. And we do have that too. Designers all the time will refer me to people that were on their teams. That, you know, that exact same thing. And occasionally I will have designers who are slowing down and wanting to kind of retire from being a designer, but still want to be in the design world and be a virtual design assistant, you know. So it just depends on where they’re at in their life.

Things change and maybe now it’s not a right fit for them to run their own design firm, but they still want to offer services to other designers. They’ll come to me and you know get work through our firm then.

Sure, absolutely. Well, we’ve covered a lot of ground today. Is there anything I forgot to ask you?

Yeah, okay.

my goodness. No, I don’t think so. Yeah, I mean, we’re just still growing and helping as many designers as we can. And we just we love it. It’s so much fun. don’t I mean, it’s interesting, you know, all the designers that went to school to become designers and then get out and think, I really love the admin side or I really love the operation side. I mean, not everyone

decided to stick with that creative side, which is great for us, because that business you need left brain, right brain people, and everyone has the experience in the design industry, they’re disabled to niche down into the areas that they love the most, you know? Yeah.

true. We are at wrap up time and wrap up time is three takeaways and I’d love to get three items that you’d like to reinforce that we talked about today.

Sure. So I would say number one, if you are looking to outsource, just take a minute. Look, assess your business, try to figure out where you need help and prioritize a list and look at those top things to get you started with outsourcing. So it’s not so overwhelming. Also consider if you’re cut out for outsourcing.

Because I, you know, I just want to make sure that you are well aware of if you’re a person who knows you need 100 % control and you don’t like to outsource things, then it might not be a fit for you. We want to help those people who want to be helped, you know, that’s the best way to go about it. And I would also say that, you know, it’s outsourcing just like when you started your business as an entrepreneur.

You just have to look at it that way, I guess. You you take risks as an entrepreneur in building a business and everything you do. Take that small risk of outsourcing and you will immediately see the best, you know, the great results and how it will help you continue to grow your business. Take back some time. You know, I see so many designers who are so busy, they almost get too busy to then outsource because they feel like they’re not.

that they’re just scattered and I don’t even know where to start. And those are a lot of them that come to me and I try to help them get organized and say, okay, I’m going to walk you through this. Don’t worry, we’ll get you on a plan, you know, because I don’t want it to be overwhelming for them either. So sometimes it’s good to think about outsourcing, maybe before you might even think you need it.

One of the things you might want to consider is doing an inventory of what you don’t like to do and what you’re not good at doing. And those things should be on a list that you should be discussing with Danae. So you can find somebody to do that.

you. Absolutely because the number one thing people find and learn about themselves is if you don’t like to do it you’re probably going to procrastinate it.

And so those are some of the best things to outsource. Absolutely.

Yeah, well, thank you so much for your time today, today. Thanks for sharing and I hope this helps all these people who are desperately needing to expand team, but they don’t need a full time person. They should be reaching out to you.

Yeah, thank you, Gail, so much. I appreciate it.

Of course.

This week on the Creative Genius podcast, Gail Doby welcomes Mike Ufferman and Catrina Cooper, the principals of Loczi Design. Mike and Catrina detail their professional pivot from the restaurant and auction house operations fields into the design world, and how they eventually came together to lead a high-growth firm in San Francisco.

The conversation explores the complexities of “internal sales,” specifically how they navigated the process of buying the company from the original founder, Paige, after years of working as her leadership team. They share the raw, “brothers and sisters” dynamic of their leadership style and how professional coaching helped them move past emotional friction to achieve true operational alignment.

Hear about the strategic “miracle” team of advisors—from valuation experts to business attorneys—that allowed them to complete a full company transfer in under six months. Mike and Catrina also discuss the “unreasonable” client service strategies they’ve implemented to drive their current record profits and why they are already planning their own exit strategies.

Key discussion points in this episode:

If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full show notes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s14e8-shownotes

Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors.

Welcome to the Creative Genius podcast, Mike and Kat. I am so happy to see you. It’s been a while and it has been an interesting journey for you two and I can’t wait to dive into that today. First, I want to start with how did you two get into design and start working together and just tell us a little bit. I’ll start with you, Katrina. Okay.

First off, thanks for having us. We’re excited to be here with you. It’s our first podcast, so we’ll do our best.

Yeah, holy, you’re virgins.

So how did I get into design? as you already know, Gail, I was in the restaurant business for a very, long time before I started doing this. And at some point just realized I didn’t want to do that forever. And a good friend of mine said, you know, you’re kind of a natural designer. Why don’t you go to design school? So I took that advice and went to school for a few years and then just started working and, you know, have kind of built my career from there.

So it, yeah, I mean, it kind of happened nice and organically, but a little later in life maybe than other people.

Okay, yeah, well I didn’t go back to school till I was 35 for design so yeah.

That’s about how old I was too, yeah.

And I graduated, I think, two years later. yeah, it was good to go back. I think everybody needs to decide what it is that they’re called to do.

Yeah.

Right, right. Yeah, yeah, it’s nice to have a second career and have some to do it later in life to it was more intentional. I mean, I was able to do a lot better than I think I probably would have right out of high school.

sure. This is such a different industry anyway. And of course, you’ve gone from being an employee to owning the firm. We’re going to talk about that in a couple of minutes. But Mike, about you, how did you get into design?

boy, that’s a long journey for me. I grew up in Ohio in Cincinnati in this small town and went to school for business at the University of Cincinnati and worked my way through college working at a hospital there and was sure that I was gonna go on to medical school and I really wanted to work in labor and delivery. That was the field. I got accepted there and studied a little bit and just decided it wasn’t really for me.

Did a couple things and ended up out in California and I was working operations for an auction house out here. At the time it was called Butterfields, it was a very famous auction house in California. Another company bought them and I was running a lot of operations. I was seeing art every day. I was just getting a master’s degree in art education every day I came to work. I fell in love with design from that. And I had…

You know, a change in life happened there and a friend of mine called me while I was literally vacationing on a beach in Mexico and said, Hey, I’m starting an interior design firm, get in your car and come back up here. Uh, and I did, and I turned around and I went back up and I ran his business with him for seven years and, um, he owns a building downtown and Paige, the previous owner of the company here was doing a photo shoot with Katrina and some others there. And I showed up and we talked and we ended up working together and.

A couple of years ago, I went back to Berkeley and studied a design there and we’re here now.

It is so crazy. Yeah, I think it really makes a difference if you have a business background too or some other experience coming into this and for you Katrina just having that hospitality background is perfect for interior design. Tell me a little bit about your firm who’s on the team, what the roles are, the responsibilities. I know both of you are the principals and the owners now, but what about the rest of your team?

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we’ve got six people in our San Francisco office. Of course, Mike and I work there and Ava is our senior designer handling some of the larger projects. We’ve got Diana and Jennifer who are both working as associate designers and then Eric is our staff designer. Samantha is hand in hand working with Mike. She runs our whole office and his whole life.

And we also have Olga, who doesn’t work in the office with us. She’s our controller. She’s a big part of what we do at LOXIE.

Well, that’s a good size team too. Yeah. I’m sure you’re feeling a little bit stretched because it sounds like you’re busy right now.

Sure are, yeah.

And we are having that conversation right now too about hiring a couple staff members, maybe another senior designer and also another staff designer.

That’s great news. like hearing that. What was going on in your business? When you reached out a few years ago, we determined there was probably somewhere in the range of five to seven years ago when you reached out. And at that point, you weren’t the owners of the business. So what was going on that caused you to do that?

I’m sorry.

Yeah, there was a lot. We were growing quite a bit and there were three of us that were leading the firm. We knew what we wanted to do, but we were going in different directions with it. We all wanted to grow, but we were growing differently. We were having a hard time sort of coming together with what our plan looked like. And it was really sort of important for us to reach out to you at that point, just to

to save the company really, to really figure out what we were gonna do next with the company, where we were gonna go with it. And that’s how we got to you.

Yeah, and you said it was a friend of yours and I don’t even know who it was that you knew, but…

Yeah, that friend of mine said, mean, going back to that, my friend, we were looking for a business coach and a friend of mine knew you or knew of you somehow, suggested that we reach out to you. And he said to me, you need to talk to her. She is the inter-design coach of the stars. We knew right then that you were who we needed to speak to and we never looked back after that.

my gosh, that’s so funny. I have no idea why anybody would say that, but okay. Yeah, my little secret is that I try really hard to not work with the celebrity designers. They, it is a no-go for me.

for.

You

Hmm, interesting. I hear more about that someday.

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s another story all by itself. Some stories I can’t really say, so I’ll just leave it at that. But anyway, so you had a lot of chaos going on and let’s talk about that crazy day that we had. So I flew out there and met with three of you and I remember meeting or waiting for you all at the office. I was there on time and everybody was a little bit late and I was standing outside and all these guys were out there.

Brutal pruning in front of the office.

Yeah, we had a plumbing issue, I guess, that day and they were trying to break into the plumbing line and they had jackhammers outside and they were really making a mess of it. So it was a no-go to be in the office that day.

Yeah, and I remember that actually the whole plumbing wasn’t working and that we had to go to your house. And so, and then you guys starved me because we didn’t eat dinner. 1130 at night, I just remember that it was just one of those really unusual situations. We were having a very long day and I remember being so tired at the end of the day and you all dropped me off and I got…

Right.

ride back to the hotel and I think it was about midnight when I went to bed and it was just, it was a day. I can’t remember a day going now long before.

Yeah, in my living room, like we had to leave our studio space and I live the closest so we all packed up and went to my house and had our VIP day.

You realize that there are a lot of things you needed to change. So it was not a simple thing. And then we tell people that this is work. You cannot just come to us and get the suggestions. You have to do something about it. You actually have to implement. yeah, it takes a while to get to that point. And sometimes, and I think in the case of all of you, there was not necessarily alignment between what needed to be done.

And I think that was the thing that I noticed when I was coming in is that the three of you needed to get aligned and you had to agree on what the direction was for the company and who was doing what and why and what you were really trying to accomplish as a whole. So looking back on that now, what were some of the biggest impacts that you experienced after starting to actually put things in place?

Well, I think a lot of it was the interaction between the three of us just as a leadership team. Like that was the biggest accomplishment I think that we got from working with you is learning how to work with each other better than we were. It wasn’t the carry the two and divide by three and that gets you mark up so much for us. It was how do you navigate your business? when there are three of you on a leadership team,

How do you navigate through that and how do you keep emotions in check? It’s very emotional when you’re working with people so closely. So our learning experience just came from spending time with you. And honestly, if I can be very transparent, there were times when the three of us were on leadership calls, Katrina, Paige and I, and we’ll say we are brothers and sisters. Like we go at it sometimes. Like brothers and sisters would. Interestingly enough,

when we add a fourth person to that call, i.e. Gail, you tend to be on a better behavior sometimes. You that, right? No one wants to that side of them. just having your, honestly, having your presence around, for me in any way, really changed how I approach my management portion of the company.

Sometimes.

Well, interesting. Yeah, and I think that what was interesting about it is there was so much emotion involved for the three of you. I have not run into that ever before. And it’s not a negative thing per se, but like you said, and sisters, you don’t always get along, especially when you’ve worked together that many years. And it is okay to be able to

have disagreements and sometimes just knock down drag outs because it’s really important to get it out. You’ve got to resolve whatever that issue is. And I think honestly, you guys are the beginning of me starting to coach leadership teams. And that’s what I tend to do mostly all, all the time now for the very reason that I think that it really helps people understand the dynamics of how to work together.

Because if you can’t communicate well and you can’t agree in a line on where you’re going, then it becomes a very messy, sloppy situation.

Yeah, in particular when there’s one owner of the company, right? And then there two employees who are on a leadership team. And at the end of the day, that owner has a say in what happens. But when you’re the person running the finances and managing books and you know where money goes and how it comes in and out, and Paige’s strength is her creativity and the brilliantness that she brings to every project she’s got. And Katrina’s ability to like

project manage like everything that she’s creating and then me quote quote paying for it on the back end with the books. You know, it is this we’re all trying to accomplish the same thing, but we were coming at it from three different perspectives.

Yeah, you definitely provided a structure for us because I think because of you know the way it started it’s a small kind of startup company everyone’s really passionate we all got to know each other really well we love each other a lot. But we were all doing the best we could like Mike just outlined like we all have our lane and our super strengths which is why the company was so strong.

But without a real structure in place and kind of not knowing it was missing or definitely wouldn’t know how to put it together, it was tough for us to come together. So when we were working with you and you were kind of mediating and kind of therapy and, you know, kind of just being that anchor in the room that was like, well, we’re supposed to, you know, we’ve got to, we’re, trying to build a system here.

and the system is around the advice we’re getting and we’re trying to, I think all of us, the three of us, me, Mike and Paige learned how to realize that part of the success is learning how to communicate, to compromise, to come to a conclusion and just sit behind that conclusion and move forward. And just that simple shift, like that simple structure outlined for us, I think it started to sink in and it just started to work a little bit better.

things got a little easier, a little more organized, and we started implementing all kinds of great things. So I think it really helped a lot.

Well, yeah, and you grew really fast. And so right after you came on board, your revenue went way up and your profit went way up. And and to me, that was I think it was really because you were all more aligned on what needed to be done and who was doing what within the company. So that was one of the things that I noticed when we were working together.

And of course it was interesting because it hadn’t been that long since Paige moved to Chicago because her husband took a job there. Right. And so let’s talk about that because that was an interesting change for you all because all of a sudden she’s not there in the office all the time. so how did that change the connection with her in the business and with all of you?

Yeah.

And that happened right around COVID, right? I was trying to remember when page left and Johnny took that job in Chicago, it was right around COVID. So it was her leaving and then a global pandemic happening at the same time. Am I right about that timeline, Kat?

So yeah, COVID started to ramp up in February and then March was when all the shutdowns started and she moved in August of 2020. it was really a strange, especially for her. I mean, she was in a complete upheaval state of, you know, the world’s falling apart and I’m gonna move away from my company that I love so much. I know I have a team here that will run it, but we’re gonna drive across the country during a pandemic and start a new life. So everybody,

It’s funny that it happened in conjunction with COVID because both things were such life shifting events that, I mean, maybe one helped the other because we were all already having to work remotely, like designing whole homes, through Zoom and, you know, having to hone all these new skills. Then the idea of her going was like, well, this is just another thing that we’re going to figure out. We’ve already learned how to work remotely because of COVID. We’re going to work remotely with Paige. You know, we’re going to help her get settled.

and we just sort of, like we always do, we just said, yes. Okay. Yes. We’re going to make this work. We’re going to do it. Like we’re going to keep going no matter what. And we’re going to make it work together because as much as, know, there’s been tension and sometimes there’s disagreements, there’s always been the firm and you’ll know, you know, this Gail, the firm rock solid, like, well, no one’s leaving. Like this is what we’re doing. So no matter what happens, even if I flip out for a little while, I got to go over there. I’m going to come back. So.

It’s right, you know, it was it was an interesting time of a lot of unknowns, but we all agreed like we’re going to go for it. We’re going to make it work.

We did do that, but we also had a conversation too when she first talked about moving, about closing the company, if you remember. We had a very brief conversation about is this it? How could we even do this with me not here, with Paige not here? So we’ve had that conversation before about a transition of the company somehow, whether it was a closure or next iteration of it. So Kat’s right in the fact that we kind of have gone through this process before, you know,

with the quote, death of Paige in San Francisco and moving to Chicago. And then from the ashes of that, like sprouting the company again, and then having this grand plan of opening a Chicago office too with Paige heading it there. So we had like all these, these, these tools in place to do all of this. So I think that that was, was really instrumental in getting us to where we are right now, just having that history. Like Katrina said, like we’ve done this, no one’s going anywhere.

We’ve got it, let’s keep going.

Right. Well, and what I saw, especially from the two of you, is such a connection. And you two just work so well together. Not that Paige didn’t work well with you, she did. But you two are just like joined at the hip and you really are a great team, which is very cool because now that you’re owners of the company, I see that as I couldn’t see

this company continuing without both of you. So, think you both had a place in the business and in the plan. And then of course, was, I don’t know what a year and half, two years later when she decided she needed to consider selling the business. So that kind of came out of the blue. And I remember talking to her about it several times and she asked if I could help with that. And I said, yeah, I can help with that.

And so how did she approach you and when did she approach you?

Well, I’ll kind of start it and then I’ll let you take it, Mike. You know, it really was, like Mike said, even back when the Chicago thing came up, there was a little bit of like, do we buy it now? Do we close it? Like, what are we doing? What does it look like? And then as time went on, so, know, 2025 now, we bought it January 1st of this year. So she was gone for four years before we decided to make the change. And, you know, she had…

There were rumblings of it for quite some time. And I know she was talking to you about it, Gail, but it didn’t really come to like a full head of like, okay, this is happening right now until, you know, quite far into the process. And then I’ll let you take it from here, Mike.

Yeah, I think what that was too was, you know, after COVID, we had a really, really successful year in the company, profits were through the roof. And then people had to go back to work. And then our business for the next two years didn’t do as well as it did around the COVID period and previous years. And we had a loss two years in a row. And we were trying to figure out first, how do we stop this bleeding from happening?

What cuts do we need to make? What changes do we need to make in order to right the ship again? And we would look at our reports and there was a point where I was just like, gosh, I don’t even want to show these reports because they’re just not looking great at this point. And we had a couple of conversations last year that was like, look, if we can’t turn this around, like, why are we still doing this? But we’ve always believed in ourselves and we’ve always believed in our brand and we always knew that we could do it somehow.

And we did have conversations about maybe this is it. Maybe this we just disband here. And Paige was in town. And I remember that you and her and a couple of our employees were at an art gallery, I think. And I was waiting on you at a Thai restaurant. And Paige showed up at the restaurant. And very lovingly, we had this really beautiful conversation about where she was, where she had come from, where she had feeling the work she’d put in. This would be a really great question for Paige to answer, actually, because

She had a lot of heart and soul into like getting to the point of even offering to sell this company. This was her baby. Like this is, this is her identity. This is her history. This is everything about her. And for her to say, I think I’m ready to hand it over. That’s a big deal. And we didn’t take that lightly at all. Now we did think that we had more time to make the transition happen and it ended up happening very, very quickly. And it was a scramble.

to get everything done. A healthy scramble to get everything, but we got it finished.

Yeah.

I remember that very well. And when she started talking to me about it, and I know I was talking to the two of you also kind of in different conversations, and you all had different opinions about whether you wanted to do this, whether you were interested in it. But the thing that she always said to me privately was, just love Kat and Mike, and I want them to own this company. I think

they should run the company. I said, I agree, they’re the right people to run the company. They can certainly buy it and they can certainly do this. And she was all in. She wanted to make sure that you were well taken care of. So that was her message to me throughout from the very beginning of the process. So I remember that well.

Yeah.

And we’re very appreciative of that too. We know that and we’re very, very appreciative of that.

Yeah, a lot of emotions involved in it for sure, because behind all the paperwork and the learnings and the stress and the timing and all of that, it was the three of us and her kind of generosity and just the place that she came from around the whole, it was very generous and it was really lovely. mean, looking back at it now, we’re very, very lucky. I mean, we just built up this company together, the three of us.

built the company we wanted to work at. always say that. And then she agreed to, she got secure with herself as far as like, really do, I am ready to step away and I am okay with letting it still live on, even though it’s my name with the two of them kind of running it from here. And it was very, very generous. was a great situation. Really feel very lucky.

Yeah, I agree. think her intent was positive from the beginning. And so that is the best way to come into a situation like this. she wasn’t trying to take advantage or charge you ridiculous amounts for it. She was, I think, exceptionally fair in the way she approached it. So when I look at it from the outside, because I’ve helped several companies now go through this sale process.

And I look at it and it’s not always that way. And it doesn’t always turn out the way that you want it to. But she had asked me to throughout, she said, can you help me through this and help us work through this? And I said, absolutely, because it’s something that it really was more about making sure that everybody was well cared for in the process. And yes, it’s still a business transaction, but there’s a lot of

of the people part, emotional part that has to be addressed. and I know it was hard for you all and I think sometimes scary to come into it, especially after having a couple of down years to like, should we really buy this company? And the thing that I knew was, yes, you should because you had a good brand, you had a great visual, you had put so much money into your branding and all the things that you were doing.

that it would have been crazy to walk away from that. that was really, it gave you a leg up to have, to be buying into a business that could be turned around, which you obviously have done. So tell me a little bit about the process. How long did it take you? You said it was very short, which it was. And what were some of the things that you had to do to complete that transaction?

Yeah.

Well, we had to get the team in place first to help us. We needed advisors, and that was a key critical component to this. I am part of a pretty

extensive networking group here in San Francisco. And we’ve been very fortunate to find a good group of people in there with really diverse skills. And I will credit to the day I no longer work at this company, all the people from that networking group who stepped up to support Katrina and I and Paige through this entire process. We had in our networking group a woman who does company valuations. We had a business transaction attorney in our group.

we had an architect, we’ve got the contractors, like you named them, they’re all in this group. And we were able to pull on that to have them come over and act in this judiciary way that was fair to both parties. Like we didn’t have two valuations done. Kat and Paige and I all said, let’s go with this valuation. We trust Annette and what she’s doing. She provided the information. We reviewed it all and we made decisions based on that. We had a CPA that we’ve been working with for a number of years.

who was kind of instrumental in structuring how the buyout would look. Mike, you’re gonna pull funds from here. Katrina’s gonna fund this. We’re gonna pay page in this manner and it’s gonna look like this. These are the dates we’re gonna do this. So she was instrumental in that role and then bringing Anthony, our attorney in to draft the agreement around all of that. And also he spent a lot of time pulling documents that we needed to have, articles of incorporation, stock agreements.

all the things that we had to prepare for him. It was a lot of work to get those documents together. Fortunately, I’m the keeper of most of those documents. So it was a barely painless process for us to get all that together. But just having all of these people on our team, you included being very instrumental in that. And then the final component was having our financial planner, mine and Katrina’s financial planner on board too, looking at all the documents saying, here are the implications of all this and here’s what it could look like for you.

Having those components in place with all that documentation is the only reason we are able to do this in the short amount of time that we were. It took less than six months to make the entire transfer.

Right.

Yeah, yeah. To the signature on the deal. was really, really fast.

It was, mean, the signature on the deal was literally because our CPA wanted it done in the calendar year 2024. Our attorney was at work on New Year’s Eve at noon. And we were at our docu signs waiting for it to come through to make this transaction happen literally at the 11th hour.

We were up and down.

Yeah, I think it was like 330 in the afternoon on New Year’s Eve and we were like, the makes are going to close. Are we going to get, mean, it was really last minute. It was so much of it was kind of a miracle. Like it’s, it’s a great exercise. And like, if you build it, they will come, or if you imagine it or ask for it, or you, you know, you step toward it, it will come because the group of people that we had around us, like Mike said, was, it was a miracle. It was just amazing that we had access to these people that

we had a relationship with and that we trusted. We would have been lost if we had to find those people and vet them. And it was really, it was really something.

It’s a lot and it does take a team. takes people you trust, people that can work together too. So each of those may or may not have worked together before in a transaction. So you need people that have transactional experience.

That’s right. And none of them had ever met before. So we had cobbled this team together and put them in rooms of strangers together saying, okay, here’s what we’re trying to do. And they’re like, where’s the other attorney? Like, no, no, no, you’re the only one. Where’s the other business? No, no, no, you’re the only one. You’re acting in all of our best interest here. And I think that having the foundation of what we were trying to accomplish ready to go, and meaning that Kat and Paige and I talked about

what this would look like and what we might encounter. And you sang very clearly to us, look, there are gonna be challenges. This is going to get very personal and very emotional. And it did, but having all of those conversations on the front end really aligned us really well so that when we went into this, we went in not from opposing sides, but from the side of like, how can we best all come together and do something really positive and successful? And I think we were really able to do that.

It’s interesting because I worked with another company that used one transaction attorney. now we did it for the sole reason that it actually made it less contentious. And it was allowing it to move faster in this way because you were mostly agreed on the terms and conditions. And it was really more a matter of that person helping you execute on.

Yeah.

This was more of an internal sale between colleagues and employer employees. This wasn’t an outside transaction where a lot of negotiation went into it with people that you didn’t know at all. this, if you’re gonna buy a company, I really think the best way to do it is work there. And buy it from a friend, right? I will not really agree with that.

Well, how does it feel running the business?

It’s scary as hell.

It’s super fun!

Yeah, it’s both, isn’t it? There is no way that it can be anything but both of those.

Yeah.

It’s very exciting. for myself, it’s it’s rewarding in a way that I don’t know that I have words for in that Paige and Kat and I, like we’ve mentioned, we’re so close and Paige just wanted the best for us too. So also to have her like as our cheerleader in the background here too, like we’re sharing with her, we’re having record profits this year, record profits this year.

And to have her, when I told her this at lunch a couple of months ago, and I’m sorry she’s going to listen to this and I hope I don’t embarrass her. She was crying about, was in tears. She was so happy and proud of where we’d gotten to. And there’s, don’t know that there are words to describe how good it feels to take someone’s legacy and pull it forward in a really meaningful way with integrity and intention and to come from that perspective. It’s just.

It’s so rewarding for me particularly.

I love that. And I think too that having her still there in the background, still your friend, and you’re still talking and seeing each other, it just speaks so well for the relationship you all have. And I guess I’d ask this question, and it’s not as a negative, it’s more about knowing what you know now, would you have started your own business instead of buying one?

of.

No, and you advised us on that as well. The three of us sat on a phone call and we talked about what if we can’t make this transaction happen? Like, should we just go out and do this on our own and start over again? And we looked at numbers and we looked at the efforts, the sweat that we’re going to have to put in this, the time that we’re going to have to put into building and branding something new, which we could do. I have every confidence that we could do that.

but it was right there for us. And it was handed to us in such an elegant way that there was no world where I really wanted to do this from scratch again. I would much rather my team, all of us be focusing on creating lovely projects and changing people’s homes and lives versus stressing about marketing dollars and getting into a magazine so someone knows to call us somewhere.

Mm hmm. Sure. Well, and you had a lot of that that you’re working on, too, is getting the marketing back in gear as well. let’s talk about the partnership between the two of you, because that is something that you had worked together as friends, as colleagues in the business. Has this changed your relationship? How do you feel about it now that you’re partners versus just working on your own? Because sometimes partnerships don’t work.

Well, Mike and I fight pretty well. do. We do well. Like I don’t and I don’t mean we fight a lot and it’s awful. I mean, like we’re pretty good at it. Like we know each other really well. We will speak for me. I’m comfortable being super vulnerable and embarrassingly like raw or incorrect in front of him so that he can really see what’s happening. So we’re really honest with each other. And I think that helps us a lot in.

in the business because we do know each other, have the best intention. We also, like you had mentioned earlier, Gail, we have always partnered well together because we’re very similar. We think very similarly. So there’s not a lot of debate about like what should go where and which direction we should move in. We feel very similarly, which is a blessing. mean, that’s really just such a great thing because it just kind of happens. So I think the foundation of our relationship and, you know, has been a huge part of

making this as easy as it can be. We have a lot of work to do to set things in place and to get down to the nitty gritty of what happens when what happens. But we also have pretty firm roles, which I know Mike can talk a little bit more about. We have our lane, we know where we’re supposed to be. And that helps a lot too. We try not to step on each other’s toes. Sometimes we do, but we try to say it in advance. Sorry, I’m gonna step on your toes a little bit. Sorry, I’m gonna say this.

So it goes, you know, it goes pretty well. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

It definitely changes your relationship though, right? Because before we were colleagues that were working for Loxi Design and now we’re partners who own a firm together and we’re much more and we were very intertwined before anyway. She’s one of my dearest, dearest friends on the entire planet. And I wouldn’t want to do this with anybody else. I really wouldn’t. She’s brilliant at what she does. And I’m so thankful that she’s on our team. I just am so thankful of that.

And they’re all in, we’re very intertwined and like we’ve gotten ourselves to the point where I made a comment to somebody the day I said, we’re at this point where we know each other so well that we know when the other one needs to lead and when the other one needs to be led. So we’ve got this really good dynamic of being able to step back and letting the other person lead when it’s their role to do so. And when it’s not step back and let that other person take that role.

Well, that is one of the positive things about being friends and also knowing each other and working together for so many years too. And staying in your lane is probably a big key to that as well.

percent. Yeah.

And there’s a lot of crossover in those lanes. we stay on lane, but I will have no problem pulling her in going, I need help here. I’m stuck in analysis paralysis. I can’t get out of this. I can’t make a decision on this marketing plan. Come here and help me. And within seconds it’s solved and we’ve moved on. Like you need that kind of partner that can come in. And when you’re stuck, they can come in and like step in and just say, I got this, do this, let’s move on. And that’s what she’s so great at doing.

I think you brought up a really important point, and that is learning to be decisive and also learning which way to make decisions because there are really three ways you can do it. You can do it unilaterally, which is very tough when you’ve got two people who own it together. And there’s also getting the other person’s input, and then one of you makes the decision. And the third one is doing it collaboratively, where you have to agree.

before you move forward. So it’s one of those three ways. And I think it’s really important to know which one is working at that particular moment for that particular decision. But to me, the biggest problem that a lot of people have running these businesses is not being decisive. And the reality is, is you’ve just got to make a decision and just go and you figure it out later. If it’s not the right one, you you’ll adjust, you’ll fix it.

or you’ll stop what you’re doing and try something different. So it doesn’t matter. It just matters that you’re making a decision and moving on.

I couldn’t agree with that more. Yeah, even if it’s the wrong decision, you make a decision and then you correct it.

Do something rather than nothing.

Absolutely. So what’s your vision going forward? Where do you want to go from here?

Yeah, this is the tough one to answer because we’re kind of building it now. think Mike and I talked a little bit about this yesterday. And with the year that we’ve had with all the learning and the foundation building and the massive growth that we’ve had this year, when, at least for me, when I’m posed with the question, like, what’s your vision and what do you want next? The only thing that comes to mind is for this to just keep going. you know, just, we just, think for me, I’m still in a place

You know, we’re almost a year into owning the company. And I think I’m still in a place where we’re figuring that out and we’re just learning to be owners and learning to work together. And I think we know that we need to, you know, come up with a vision and a plan and we need to have some goals set for ourselves. And I think we both kind of do loosely, maybe individually, but we have a lot of stuff to build that we’re excited to do, but we haven’t quite started it yet. So right now my vision is

that we keep what we’ve got. have a wonderful team. We’ve got amazing clients coming in. And I’m just grateful that that’s where we’ve started as the owners. So right now that’s kind of all I can see in my view. Mike might have some other bigger vision.

Well, my vision is don’t burn it down. But it’s important. I get asked that a lot. Now, the company, what’s your vision? And I have to say that I’m not trying to dance around it, but we’ve built our vision. We’ve been here for 13 years now building.

The same.

our future and now we’re living in our future that we’ve built. So for that, like that is my, that’s my vision is to just design with integrity and intent. I’ve mentioned that before to grow thoughtfully and to take on really exciting projects and do some work that maybe we’ve not done before. We’ve worked on a bed and breakfast recently in Mendocino.

We have another one, exciting one that we might be working on in San Jose that’s a nice bed and breakfast as well too. So we’ve got these potential projects coming in that like help us expand and stretch muscles that we haven’t been stretching that much yet because we’ve been doing really good work and residential. But now it’s kind of an opportunity to see, yeah, it’s still residential, but it’s breaching that hospitality moment right now. So I’m excited to like touch on that a little bit and see where that takes us.

Sure. Well, have you read Unreasonable Hospitality, that book? It’s such a good book. I love that.

Yes, over and over and over and over and over.

I, Katrina has heard this multiple times now. So she’s like, really? You to tell the story again.

on business. I’m like, I know.

You recommended this book to us and I listened to the audio version of this book and because the author is the general manager of this restaurant, right? And the story about this book is he and a friend of his, who’s a chef, buy a restaurant and they’re trying to turn it into a Michelin star restaurant. And not only a Michelin star restaurant, but the number one restaurant on the entire planet.

And it’s called Eleven Madison Park in New York City for anyone that’s listening to this, read this book, it will change your life. And the whole book is about the unreasonable links that they go to to change how they are and how they function and how they operate to be better. Nothing is ever good enough for them. They question gift giving, which has been a enormous change for me and the things that we do for some of our clients now and some of our potential clients.

and the feedback that we’re getting just from following some of the principles from this book have changed how I manage all of my client relationships. Read this book.

It is so good. It is so good. And I’m really glad that you’re using that and putting it into action because when you do, you can wow your clients. You can treat them in ways that they’ve never thought about and they really now want to have because that is so special to have that kind of a relationship with someone who provides professional service for them.

So.

Yeah, I

shared this book with the editor of Lux Magazine out here and she’s a good friend of ours. she and I talked about this book. This was two years ago when we had this conversation. She and I still talk about what we’ve done around gift giving with this. And I’ll give you, if I can, I’ll give you a very quick example of one of the things that we’ve done. I was on a client call earlier this year and she was sitting in her car and we were talking about a kitchen remodel.

And her dog kept popping up in the background in the backseat of the car. And I asked her first off why she was in her car. And she said, well, I’ve got a contractor inside who’s giving us a quote on the kitchen. And I said, well, why do you have him in there? He doesn’t have anything to quote yet. So first off, get him out of your house. We don’t need him there yet. And second, why is your dog in the backseat? And she said, well, because he’s a little rambunctious in the house and he just he can’t be around people, but he’s behaving very well right now. So I’m really happy that he’s sitting in the car.

And the call went on and on. And afterwards we got off the call and Samantha, who runs our entire life at work, I said to her, said, go find a pet store, get dog treats and a card that just says, thank you. And I want you to write on the inside of that, who’s a good boy and send it to them. So we had it delivered and she reached out and said, I cannot believe that you thought to give my dog in the back seat, a treat for behaving himself, why we were on this call.

And now we get to work together.

That is so cute. I love that.

Yeah, and that came directly from that book.

Well, it’s so great to be able to come up with some creative ideas because it’s an expansion of your creativity because it is a relationship driven business. And if we can build these beautiful relationships with people, they’re going to come back. They really don’t. Well, that’s great.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Personally, I mean, repeat clientele and it’s just so wonderful. I mean, that’s what we really want to build.

Of course. Well, I know this is a weird question to ask you, but have you started thinking about your exit strategy?

Every day. Every day. Every day. mean, look, I’m 55 years old. I’m thinking of where I’m going to be in 10 years and life changes are happening. we have a fantastic financial planner Katrina and I are working with and he’s so involved in how healthy the company is and what we’re doing and where we’re going and what our goals are, individual goals are.

Everyday.

I just met with him yesterday afternoon and I got off the call and I was like, my goodness, that feels so much better having had that conversation. And it wasn’t like, I need to sell something in three years from now, but it was the, if the company continues to grow and flourish, the valuation of the company will be, you know, such that it’s valued really well. And we have this potential to either sell it at that point, maybe to employees that we have. So it’s just really nice to start thinking about.

what that would look like, but not losing sight of the thought that we still have a lot of work to do to keep the company on the same track that it’s on and to keep the profits coming in the way they are right now, right? So that when it is time for Katrina and I to let go or no longer be stewards of this company and allow the next people to come in and shepherd it, that we’ve got it in a really good place to do so.

What happens if one of you decides you don’t want to continue? there’s some life happens, of course, and you have an agreement in place. Have you done that already?

We are working on that. I I’m going to state this for both of us that we have this one year goal of learning and by January we’ve got to hit the ground running for sure on all of these things that we’ve been advised to put in place. we’re both excited to do it. just kind of business is getting in the way and projects and stuff like that. we’ve got

Like we mentioned before, we’ve got such great advisors and such a great team. And we’ve got a lot of people saying, do you have this yet? Do have this? Do you have this? And we just need to start building. And I just asked Mike yesterday, what’s the first thing on that list? Like, what’s the first thing we would do? And he answered and I said, well, let’s just at least chip away at that. Like, let’s just start putting it together because we know we need to do that. It’s really, really important.

You should take our assessment. We put together an assessment. It’s I think about 150 questions and it lists out a lot of the things that you need to have in place. So I’ll send that to you.

I would love to see that because I think we’ve got some of them, but every time I think I’ve got it, our financial planner is like, but you have a long 15 year term, long term health insurance or a life insurance policy. and it’s like,

That’s just one more thing we’ve got to check off this list now. So I do, I have a checklist. I would love to see what your assessment looks like as well too. We’re starting with updating our trust in the States. And you know, that we own the company and if something got forbid should happen to one of the two of us, we want to make sure that, you know, everything is outlined, what our wishes are now that we own this business. All this has changed and we have to make a lot of updates there.

And then there are things in that buy sell agreement that are what happens if one of us isn’t able to work anymore. I forbid there’s an accident or something happens or someone wants to leave what happens. And you have to have insurance policies in place to cover those things that’s covered in that buy sell agreement. And the buy sell agreement is one of those things. It’s no fun. No one wants to do it. But what I’ll tell you is that our attorney said, do it while you’re still sort of in this.

honeymoon phase of owning the company while things are really good. You can talk about things that like might not be so great. Well, what we disagree and we can’t solve something and we have to dissolve the company, what happens to that? That’s all written in this buy sell agreement. They’re not things you want to talk about. They’re things that you have to talk about. They’re assurances you have to have in place for your other partner. And so anybody that’s listening, like you definitely have to have a buy sell agreement in place for this. It’s not easy to do, but it’s really, really important that you have one.

It is, and also putting key person insurance in place. So for example, I have it on Erin and myself. If anything happened to either one of us, it specifically talks about that. We have in my will, and even in my husband’s will, what happens to the company in case something happens to me. So you have to really think about those things.

when you’re running a company. I know some people don’t want to think about that because it’s not pleasant, but you have to because I’ve seen too many people go through divorces, become very ill, have different things that have happened in their lives or taking care of family members. It can change in a second and you don’t know when it’s going to happen. So being prepared for that is really critical.

Well, this has been really interesting and I hope all the people that listen to this are going to understand that it is complex when you’re running a business. It’s not easy anyway, but if you’re prepared and if you’re thinking through things, if you have the right attitude toward each other, then you can do anything together. yeah. Well, I always like to end with three takeaways that you’d like to share with us. So what should our listeners

Yeah, so.

Hear hear.

take away from today’s session.

So I gave this a little bit of thought here. Kathy, don’t mind, I’ll give the takeaways here. I think the first thing, because the conversation that we’re having is about what happens when you’re trying to buy a company, particularly from the owner of the company or employee there. I think the first thing you need to do is you have to have conversations and you have to have conversations early and often about what it looks like and what it means to each person involved and what their involvement is in this. It gets real personal.

real quick. Business is your identity, as I said before, it’s your history, it’s all that you are. So you have to have those conversations and they are going to be hard conversations, but the sooner you have them, the easier they are to have. That’s first one. The second one is build the right team. You we talked earlier about having the right advisors in your sphere. It’s really critical that you have a really good CPA, you have a really good attorney and that you’ve got

a financial planner and a coach, a really good coach. I’m telling you, Gail, I’m not saying this just to talk about the Poor Collective, but like we would not be here in this position if it wasn’t for your guidance. I’m not going to sugar coat that. It is true. It is fact. Without you guiding us, we would not be here as owners of this company right now. So thank you for that. So building your team is really, really critical. That’s two. And the third one is if you’re buying a company with a partner,

You got to be really clear about roles and responsibilities. Who’s going to do what? Who’s going to manage what? Who’s going to be responsible for what? The clearer you are on those roles, the easier it is to have a partnership with that person.

That’s great. Well, what would you like to add to that?

Well, mean, building on the second thing Mike mentioned about the team, you know, also we were, you know, we take over something that exists already. We were lucky enough to have a great like front of the house team. I’ll call it Mike’s talking about the back of the house team, but we were really, really lucky to have that core group of designers, client facing people.

I’m in place already and all of them were excited for us they were super supportive so if you have great people on your team and you’re looking to buy a company you know do everything you can to retain those people to bring them into the concept early so they understand what’s happening and they don’t feel blindsided or you know so we talk to our front of the house team a lot as this was going on they knew you know every step and everybody was on board they were excited for us they all said yes we want to stay so.

know, really think about that if you’re planning, you know, to do something like that. Think about that front-facing team and kind of bring them into the mix of just awareness, you know, on the early side.

Mm-hmm. That’s great. Well, this has been so great to catch up and just hear what’s going on. I’m so thrilled to hear that you’re having a banner year. And of course, I want to know all the details. And I know I’m not asking you on the podcast, but I’ll chat with you afterwards about that. But I really am so proud of you two for making this leap and doing this. And I know that sometimes you think 55 is too old to do this, but I started

my business at 52 and I’m still working and there is no time that you have to retire. So it’s really about when you feel like you have this opportunity to build something, there’s something special about that. It is not easy and not everybody can do it. So good for you. You guys are just killing it.

Thank

Thank It is a hustle. Every day it’s a hustle. But I wake up for that challenge every day.

That’s your challenge. Well, thank you both for being on today and I hope everybody enjoyed this session and take these ideas to heart. And if you’re thinking about buying a business, then do it. Just go for it. Because if this is something that you have to do for yourself, do it. Don’t let anybody stop you.

That’s right. That’s right.

Yeah. Thanks, Gail.

Gail, good to see you too.

to see you.

This week on the Creative Genius Podcast, Gail Doby welcomes L.A. DeRiggi, founder of Hudson Park Design, to discuss his meteoric rise from a design student to a successful firm owner. L.A. reflects on his unique background in marketing and promotions, explaining how he intentionally used an unpaid internship to validate his passion before committing to a Master’s program in Interior Architecture.

The conversation dives into L.A.’s transition from being a Design Director to becoming the owner of his own firm after his previous employer retired. He candidly discusses the challenges of building a team, managing expectations, and the “static” that often interferes with a leader’s instincts. L.A. also shares a powerful metaphor for business growth through his experiences solo hiking the vortexes of Sedona, Arizona, where he learned the value of “choosing your hard”.

In this podcast, you’ll hear about:

If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full show notes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s14e7-shownotes

Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors.

Welcome to the Creative Genius Podcast LA and so glad to have you here.

Thank you so much, it’s so great to be here.

Well, I am so excited for everyone to hear from you today because you’ve had a little bit of an interesting journey and we only have a few clients that have done this where they’ve worked for somebody else and then all of sudden they either were they bought the business or they started a new business and you have just taken off like a rocket. So I’m really proud of you. I think that’s phenomenal.

Thank you.

Yeah, so let’s talk about first how did you get into design?

So.

I’ve always had this love and passion for design and moving things around and appreciating the flow of space and where things are and having nice things growing up. then I think we did in the sixth grade, we had to fill out, where do you see yourself in 20 years? And it was interior. I put interior designer. I just really felt like that was the right answer. in, gosh, who knows what year that was.

At that time, a male interior designer wasn’t like the top choice for a sixth grader. It was a lawyer, a professional basketball player, a police officer. So I erased it and I wrote architect. But still, you know, in the same field with maybe just more of a different tone to it. But then I kind of put that aside for a little bit. And then I really fell in love with the business side of things. So my first degree.

I went to school for business, business management and marketing. And then I worked for a few years afterwards. And I was doing a lot of really exciting jobs and I was working for a promotions company. And so that time right out of school, it was, was a lot of fun. I was doing different events at clubs and really trying to promote mixed martial arts, which is when that kind of first came.

big in the scene and then worked in sales, worked in business development and just really didn’t feel full at the end of the day. so I had heard about a design company, I’m from Pittsburgh originally, and there was a company in Shadyside, which is a nice area, and I just walked into the firm and

basically asked for an unpaid internship. And I was like, Hi, I’m here, I’d like to work here. And they’re like, well, what do you know? And I’m nothing. I don’t know anything. I’m happy to sweep the floors, go grab the coffee, do whatever you need me to do, but just want to be in this environment, kind of experience this industry, and see if it’s a go before I decide to go back to school for it. So I worked there, quit my jobs, worked there for three months, unpaid internship.

And then I enrolled in school in the fall in a master’s program, which I loved the program because it was a master of interior architecture. So it was really the next step. It was a two year program. I was really looking for obviously a better degree and the fastest path to get me to where I wanted to be.

Wow. Who knew? And look how well that served you because having that business development experience and the marketing and promotion and all of those different things, you had to be in business for yourself because really you have both sides that you’re able to use, Yeah. Well, so how did you end up getting to us? How did this all come about?

for sure.

So I had, so Fast Track, Pittsburgh School, graduated, moved to Florida. I worked for two firms and the firm I was working for previously to starting my own, was summer of 2021. after, it was the first High Point Market after everything really reopened and my previous boss and I were at High Point and we were,

you know, it’s always it’s always exciting to see the new furniture and visit the showrooms and things but we had never really been to any talks or speaker series. And so we got, you know, I think it was the first day we got there, we had we got the brochure and we saw your name on there and we didn’t know you. We didn’t know anything about you. We just we really liked the topic. And we thought, hey, let’s check this out. And we were working with a business coach at the time. But it was more of a it was a business coach that was

generalized. So they really kind of helped all industries. And it was one of those moments where we sat in your presentation. And it was like the stars aligned, like we just we were like, she knows what she’s talking about. And we and she can help us. And that was that was it. And then you sat you came and sat with us. You were swarmed with people. It was really like

a celebrity, I felt like there were paparazzi and all these people around you, like you were leaving this event and you immediately came up to us and were so welcoming to us and we sat with you for lunch and there were so many people like, Gail, Gail, and you’re just like, hold on, I’m having a conversation and you gave us all the attention that we needed and you know, just, was, we were like, she’s our girl, she’s gonna help us.

Well, and it was really interesting. and one of the things that I love is working with a leadership team and the three of you at that time were basically the leadership team for that company. And, it just really was, I don’t know. I think I just knew that I needed to help you all. And I think you had some really big challenges and for sure you did and you helped, helped her.

Yeah.

really get through a lot of those, let’s talk about some of those. What were some of the biggest ones she had in her business?

I think because we were a small firm at the time, but then we were growing so rapidly with the amount of projects that we were taking on. I think just from the start, it was really like organizational leadership and growing, you know, my experience coming from the business world and kind of working with structure and organizational charts and, and then going to a small design firm where there’s three people doing everything.

we’re all having to wear all the hats, regardless of, you know, position and who’s who. And then we start building the team and we went from like three people to 10 people overnight and like 10 projects to 42 projects. And so I think building kind of stepping back, looking at the vision for the company, her vision, and being able to relay the foundation, the foundation was already there. I mean, she was in business for

25 or 30 years and had built a really successful business. But I think just being able to kind of step back, lay another layer of foundation on everything and build from there to be able to create more success for her and more of what she was looking for with her company.

Well, and I think one of the things that was really interesting is watching you grow in your role there because you grew into, we talked about you being design director. So that meant you took on a lot more responsibilities and managing people and managing the projects as well. And just really getting into what it would take to run the company. You were starting to get a good feel for that with that position. So talk about that a little bit.

Yeah, it was definitely a because I think at that point I had only been there for three years. I started off as really kind of like an interior. mean, I was a licensed interior designer at the time, but started off really assisting projects. And then I was able to bring in a large project that took all of my attention away from.

Fast Track.

being able to assist and that’s where we decided we needed to grow the team. And then from there, as then we had a team and then it was like, okay, well, what do we do with all these people? And then there I was. then it was this, went from interior designer, senior designer to design director all within those three years. But I could handle it. And that was, think, where you saw the potential in that and where she saw, you know, the

potential and capacity to be able to do that and, you know, and help the team in that way. But it’s a different, you know, you’re moving so quickly and it’s learning to pivot and learning to change your mindset as you move through these different things. Because as design director, I’m not really doing much design anymore, which again, after only three years, that was kind of like a, whoa, well, I really like that and I need that. But I also see that I have to

Mm.

kind of support these people and support the owner as well and making sure that her vision and everything is carried through so that she can do what she loves. So now it’s just, it’s a completely different role. And then skipped two years later after having been second in command and now your owner. So there’s been a lot of transition and a lot of shifting quickly, shifting quickly in terms of.

what’s happening around me, not necessarily me adapting to those changes. I think generally I adapt, it doesn’t come without a challenge.

Well, I think one of the things I have noticed about you is you do have a growth mindset. You’re not you’re not in a fixed mindset where you feel like I’m this is what I’m doing. I’m not doing anything else. You’re open to learning and you’re open to finding different ways of doing things. So I’ve watched you navigate this. And this is it was pretty major stuff that you went through since it’s been four years now. Yeah. So that is a lot to go through.

So what led you to start your business?

Well…

I had always, you know, having gone through your program with the Pearl Collective and just really absorbing and learning all of the tools and what it takes to run a successful company. I I love learning. So that was just heaven for me. then, so spring of 2023, my

company, the company I was working for, she decided to retire. And while the leadership team was in you were really involved in that decision. We also, you know, had to deliver that news to the team. And so we started placing everybody which I think was probably the most amazing thing that we could have done as leaders at that time, because I don’t know if everybody would have done that. But we were actively searching for jobs for our team.

to make sure that their lives weren’t disrupted in any way. But that gave me the opportunity to really step back and think about, what is next? What does this look like? I felt, I mean, I had a lot of opportunities. I don’t even think Word was out that the company was closing and that she was retiring and people were already showing up in my text messages. Like, hey, we’re hearing some things on the street. Would you be interested in talking to me?

CEOs from really successful design firms in town. And I was like, yeah, sure, we can have the conversation, but I just don’t know what I want to do yet. And then, of course, I came to you and we talked through really what does this look like and what are all the paths. And it just it really felt like the next step in my career and personal growth. And, you know, I’m very strategic and intentional with my decisions. So I didn’t want to just jump into the first opportunity that came my way.

And this direction just, you I think and that’s why think you and I connect is because we’re both very intuitive. And this direction felt right and aligned with the long term vision of what I have for my life and for the company. And it wasn’t driven by a fear of failure. I had a clear vision and confidence in my ability to adapt. But I also knew that if it didn’t work out.

that I would have a plan B and whether that meant to join another firm or pivoting in a new direction. I’m very passionate. I love to learn and I’m very passionate about interior design and business and about the alchemy of strategic thinking and creativity that drives both. So I love to help people and for me, this is the outlet to achieve that.

It is it’s so fun. I think building businesses is fun. Yeah, and I found for myself that it was the same thing But for me for you you want more of the design I wanted more of the business side. So I think for you this is a good combination of the two So you started your firm and then you came back to us. So why did you come back?

Yeah. So my growth with the company was so rapid. And while I still had a lot of groundwork and foundation to pour for the next level, I was still shifting from second in command mindset to owner, which means owner, designer, creative director, design director, integrator, marketing, accounting, all of those things. And then I went from like,

two projects to six projects to 10 projects all at once. And it was just a lot. I really missed, I just really missed the connection that you and I had, that Erin, Patty, really the whole team at Pro Collective, but then also the community that you guys have created for us. You can’t put a value on the community that comes from the Pro Collective and just having access to people from all across the country.

dealing with the same issues. And I was recently at a photo shoot for a cover of a magazine, a local publication, and there was another designer there and she was sharing a story about something that she’s going through. And I was like, girl, I get it. Like, you are not alone. And she’s like, seriously? And I’m like, no, like, there are, I may not be dealing with this specific issue, but like, I had that same feeling last week of like, what am I doing? Is this like, should I be doing this? And it’s normal and

just to be able to have that validation from you, from the company, from the community is amazing. And so I was still shifting into that owner’s mindset and I needed help getting out of the operator position that I was starting to fall into. And it was important to me to maintain some type of work-life balance, even as an owner of the company, because I do believe that this

that exists and it’s a real concept that not everybody understands or gets to experience. But the way that you teach your owners of companies to step back and look at the structure and what you’re doing and where to spend your time and when you need to start to delegate and how to grow, I really needed that insight.

Yeah, I think that’s what happens to a lot of people say, especially that two to two and a half million range is about that time when most people come back to us for another VIP, because they are stuck at that level with that level of skills with whatever they’ve accomplished, and they keep bumping up at that. And they don’t really get too far beyond that. So then all of sudden, you have to really think about

And what is going on why am i here what is that holding me back from breaking through that going to that three to five million and i think for a lot of people that is personally i think it’s leadership skills is a big part of it and i think the second part is structuring your business correctly where the right team in the right place for you to actually be able to afford to build the team but.

I think it’s really important to have also a new vision when you get to that point. So each of the levels that you go through, if you want to break through to the next level, you have to have a bigger vision.

Of course, yeah. And it changes all the time, too. And I think that that’s really beautiful what you said, because I think that there’s, you know, with the previous company, were we even again, just laying the foundation of values and culture starting there with some things that are so basic that you’re like, yeah, I know what they are. But then you sit down and you do the exercise and you’re like, Wait, what? What are they?

just starting there is amazing. then having had done those for somebody else, now having to do them for myself and my company and what’s my vision and where do I want this to go? It really lets you expand and kind of grow from there. And it’s really interesting to experience and go through.

It is and I think you are doing great. I’ve really enjoyed watching how you’ve progressed so quickly. You have a long career ahead of you. So what is your big vision?

The big vision. I mean, I want to continue to grow the company and the team locally first. think that I think I have a lot to offer in terms of management. And while the design has been really, really fun, I do love to lean back on that business side of things. That business degree, I think that when people say like, well, you why do you why do feel like you needed to go? Or, you know, why do you have that second degree? Why? Why?

Did you go back for design? I’m like, I love that. think having had gone well, initially my my focus was accounting and then somebody told me you can’t be an accountant. You need to be around people. And I was like, OK, not just numbers. But that has helped me in so many ways, and I love being able to focus on the business and run the business. So I’m really excited about building a team locally and that I would love to be in other markets.

But ultimately, what’s really the driving force of this is the way we help people. And foundationally, as far as the company goes, we’re helping people, helping our clients, you know, realize dreams that they have, that they, you know, they’re at a certain stage in their lives where they’ve reached a certain level and they’re like, maybe they feel stuck on kind of getting to what’s next. So we really dive deep with our clients and figure out

kind of what that is and where this transition is happening and how we can take that because we want them to live their best lives in the present and then really plan for the future. Like, what does this next chapter look like for them? And so then that flows into our philanthropic work that we do at the company. I’ve always been involved in the community that I’ve lived in and I’ve known for a long time, you know, not that I just wanted to start my own company, but that

I envisioned launching a foundation of some sort one day. And my instinct has always been that if I could build something successful, then I could use that success to financially support and invest in a foundation that gives back. the long-term vision is really about creating impact and using the business as a platform to do meaningful work, both creatively in office and philanthropically.

you

Mm.

I love that. Well, I love what you said, too, about helping people live their best lives. And I think what is unusual is that your approach and your conversation around that is not something I hear often from other designers. They’re passionate about what they want to do, but it’s really about executing for themselves that passion that they have versus what I’m hearing is you’re really focused on the deeper

maybe that realization of who that person is. And I think that what I’m hearing also is that your intuition is guiding you in terms of really getting to know that client in a very deep level. So that it really is more of an impact on their lives than just doing a beautiful space.

Well, of course. mean, think about how much time we spend in our homes and even, know, if we’re actively working or, you know, in Naples, Florida, there’s a lot of retirees or people who retire from what they’ve been doing and, now want to branch into some other type of endeavor or adventure or maybe buying companies and doing things. So, but we’re still, even though it’s beautiful outside.

We’re still spending a lot of time in our homes and our spaces and we need to make sure that those really inspire us and heal us and make sure that when we come home after whatever we were doing, golfing or working, that we feel good and our home welcomes us. And it’s a representation of who we are, like I said, today and who we want to be in the future. And we talk about families and grandchildren and all those things. And I think that’s what has

helped our company become so successful is because we.

It’s we’re not cookie cutter. We’re not plug and play. I mean, a lot of what people tell us when they look at our photography or even step into our interiors is that they really feel a sense of emotion and calmness and and just, you know, there’s a cohesiveness and nothing’s really distracting and it’s not overwhelming with with things or accessories. And, you know, there’s that right level of details. We’ve had clients purchase homes that we’ve designed and

And they say, you know, we’re still noticing things, you know, and every time we look around, I mean, it’s always like, I didn’t notice that before. And they get really excited about it. And that’s really what we’re here to do.

Mm-hmm.

Well, and to me, that’s the right level of design, because when you can get to that deeper insight about a person and design for that, or maybe even take them on a journey to express themselves and design in a way that they’ve never thought about before. I that is when you’ve really hit the level where you will get referred a lot, because those people just love what you do because you see something differently.

Yeah.

So what’s your biggest life lesson so far?

I would say as a designer and business owner, I think it’s that you can easily become your own worst enemy. I think in creative work, self-doubt and perfectionism can sometimes be the loudest noise in the room than any other outside critique that you can receive. And I think when you start to learn to quiet that voice and it takes a lot of practice,

And it’s not always easy to do, especially when your email’s going and the phone ringing and you have questions from subcontractors and employees and really everyone around you.

you

can default and go back and trust your instincts and your vision. And I think that’s when your best work and your real leadership emerge. I think we all know what to do. I think sometimes there’s a lot of static with, you know, and always being pulled in different directions. I mean, think about how many emails you get a day and it’s like, look here, open me, we need this from you.

And I think when you step back and you’re just like, listen to your gut and you listen to your instinct and that’s really what can drive you in the right direction.

Mm-hmm.

That’s great. Well, I, I thought this was really interesting when we saw each other at the boardroom retreat just a couple of months ago and you went on a hike before one of the days and it was that big mountain that was right behind the hotel, which is pretty. So I thought, okay, he’s, he is really determined. So you got some big insights and I’d love for you to share a little bit about that.

So that was probably one of the hardest things I have done. And I’m not really a hiker. I mean, it’s flat here in Florida. I’m a beach boy. I’ve hiked things before. I’ve hiked Runyon Canyon in LA. I’ve done Red Rocks in Denver with Erin. That was awesome. But I’ve always done those kind of experiences with other people. And for me,

Yeah, I’m at a stage in life filled with transitions, you know, with the business, personal relationships, and even the relationship I have with myself. And so I want you know, there was this opportunity Camelback Mountain. And I was like, Okay, well, let’s do it. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. I thought it was gonna be more of a guided path. I had been used to there were definitely a lot of WTFs and

How am I supposed to get from here to there? And I was alone. So at some moments I was a little afraid and I was like, well, if I fall, what happens? All these things are running through your mind. But the end game, was like, I need to get to the top. I just have to get to summit and we’re going to go from there. And what I realized on that journey up and I wrote it down, it was really kind of cool.

that there are many different paths that we can take to reach a destination. And sometimes I choose the hardest one. and I realized when I looked at the different paths that others were taking, you know, beside me or even coming down, that sometimes mine felt harder at certain points or it felt easier in comparison to those. And it reminded me of, something that

Patty had told me the night before was choose your heart. I was like, at the time I was like, I mean, it hits. mean, those are the three, those three words together is powerful in itself. But then when you’re actually going through something, you’re like, well, this really makes sense. And I realized that every path will have its challenges. You just have to choose the one that aligns with your growth. And then, you know, when you’re able, when it’s all over, when I was,

coming back down the mountain and I’m looking back and nothing’s making sense and I don’t know how I got down. You know, I was able to pause for a moment and look back and just think the path was windy and rocky and it didn’t make sense at the time of how I got where I am. But the important thing is that we’re still moving forward and heading towards something greater.

You.

Mmm.

Well, that’s really interesting. Quite an interesting metaphor and very well timed to do that. So why do think you have a tendency to do things the hard way?

I think I take the hard way because I’m wired to push for depth and quality. I like challenges and I don’t always go for the easy win. Sometimes it is, not everything has to be hard. Sometimes it is better just to get it done and move on or do something and take the easy path. But I wanna truly experience the tasks sometimes and not just check it off the list.

And I think that some tasks are meant to be completed and you can say, okay, yeah, I did that. But then when you really get into the nitty gritty of something, it becomes a completely different experience and you understand it on a deeper level and therefore you grow and learn something in a different way. And so my experience has taught me that efficiency can be its own kind of mastery. And I’m learning to recognize what’s worth diving deep into and

what can be simplified or delegated. A few years ago, I had a mindset shift of asking why me, why is this happening to me, to now really asking myself, what’s the lesson in this challenge? Like, there’s, you know, I’m having a bad day, everybody’s coming for me today. What am I supposed to learn from this? What’s the takeaway? And then the next day, you know, the light’s there and it’s all brighter. And so it’s really been rewarding to see those lessons come.

full circle. The next time a situation arises and you can say, okay, I remember this, I see you. I know why I went through that because I’m here today to deal with it. There’s value in both. And I think fully immersing yourself in a hard, meaningful work sometimes is, you know, then you can kind of know and find the ease of the path.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, well, and we don’t learn from the easy stuff. We learn from the hard stuff, right? So if we can do those things and we can push ourselves and try things. And I think one of the things that’s really important at all stages in all businesses is being resilient. Having the grit to get through the tough things and being resilient and being willing to push through and not give up because it is sometimes it’s so hard. And I can tell you that I’ve had many days when I’ve thought.

Why am I doing this? mean, seriously, why am I doing this? Because it is so hard. But it’s because it’s so hard that very few people can do it. Right. Right. When you think about it, we are supposed to be experiencing life at a deep level. And if it’s handed to us, we don’t appreciate it. We don’t, we just don’t. Well, that brings me to another question. I understand the hard things that you’ve done.

That’s true.

But I think the the mindset piece is something that everybody deals with and have you ever had imposter syndrome or fear of failure? Fear of success any of those and if so, how did you overcome those?

I think that I think that fear of failure and fear of success is always something that can creep into our minds, especially when we’re doing something new. You know, there’s there’s times where I pause and I ask myself, am I am I on the right path? Is this what I’m supposed to be doing? and yes, and then am I performing at the level that I expect myself of myself in this industry? And for me, it’s it’s less about doubt.

and more about self accountability and a way to stay competitive without falling into comparison. There’s a lot of wonderful interior designers in town and sometimes I’ll find myself being like, well, how are they there? But then I’m also comparing my almost three year old company to a 30 year old company. And it just puts me into respect and I’m like, actually I’ve accomplished a lot in three years and I need to be really thankful and grateful for that and know that

you know, this is I’m in this for the long run. This is not, you know, the quick it’s not a quick path. And I think that mindset keeps me focused on growth and also on my integrity. think making sure that the decisions I make and the work I produce align with my values and the reputation I want to build. And for me, it’s about holding myself to a standard of excellence that reflects both my brand and my character.

rather than chasing what seems to be working for someone else. And ultimately, I think it’s a healthy check-in rather than a fear-based one about striving for authenticity, integrity, mastery, and not just perfection.

Mm-hmm.

Nah, perfection is not possible. There is no such thing. And your view of it is going to be different than someone else’s. Yeah, I remember I had a client that was the ultimate and perfectionist. And one day she was complaining about the runner going up a curved staircase. And she said, it’s not exactly the same all the way up. I said, the builder didn’t build the staircase equally. And she said,

I guess I’m just going to have to work on that. She was in her mind. It was not perfect. But what was perfect? There was not perfect. So I think we all have to figure out what is is excellence for us and not try to go to that unrealistic level.

Right.

And I think that I just want to touch on that. think that’s where Pearl Collective does a fantastic job of helping your clients manage the expectations for themselves and for their clients as well. And I think that that’s been a super valuable tool that I’ve been able to learn and that has also contributed to the success of my company is that setting boundaries and managing expectations.

Because there is no such thing as perfection.

No, there really isn’t. And if we’re striving for that, we’re using our energy incorrectly. When we have so many other things we can be doing, if we’re hitting that excellence level and pushing ourselves, we’re always going to be better. But we don’t have to be at a certain destination to be successful. Well, let’s talk about growth. And you have grown very quickly. And in fact, you won an award at the retreat for that. And I think it was a…

Over five times growth from the time that you started with us and that was really amazing. So why do you think that happened and what would you? What would you share about your marketing strategy?

I think when it comes to our marketing strategy, pretty, try to, social media is a great place that we use and while we haven’t, you everybody’s on social media and while our clients may not be contacting me because of it, somebody had made a comment to me that what we’re putting out there, it’s really great because it’s starting the conversation. It’s letting people know that they can come to us for that information and that we will have the answer.

I think that’s something that you’ve coined, provide the solution, not the problem, or something along those lines. So I think for me and for Hudson Park Design, it’s about building real relationships, staying connected with the community, the design world. I think that I hold myself and the work that our company puts out to the highest standard.

Right now, everybody’s talking about luxury or lifestyle driven design, but we’re really focused on showing what truly what that truly means through details, through our process, through the way that a space feels when it’s finished. And to me, luxury isn’t necessarily about a price point. It’s about emotion and how those something makes people feel and that sense of ease and inspiration and belonging, I think, is really what

defines true luxury. We offer a unique type of service for our clients. sometimes clients don’t always understand that at the beginning of the relationship. think, you know, there’s again, there’s a lot of options, wonderful, talented options in town. But I think, but it’s always fun to see that moment when that happens during the project, when the client really recognizes our value.

And it’s in that moment that you can feel this energetic trust. And when that clicks and when that connection is made, it’s what really drives our growth more than any traditional marketing strategy.

I love that. And honestly, that is your very best marketing strategy. And that’s for our listeners too. If you’re building a business and you’re authentic in what you’re doing and you really care about your clients, you are, and if you deliver at this high level of excellence that you’re talking about, it is a unique thing to you. Nobody else can do that in the way that you do it. So just remember that that is, that’s really your marketing.

strategy for sure is to be the best you can be in your business and as a human being. So you have to grow personally too. And I want to go. I think that segue is perfectly into your Sedona trip. And you went to that right after the border retreat. So tell me a little bit about that, why you went, what you got out of that.

So, yeah, I wanted to explore a little more of Arizona and had heard that Sedona is such a powerful and spiritual place. And I really wanted to experience that for myself. I wanted to just reconnect with nature. And it wasn’t necessarily looking for inspiration. mean, you know, of course, you hear you should do this, you should do that. And my gosh, you’re going to get so inspired by the landscapes. But it was really just about connecting with nature and its energy. And I visited

and hiked the four major vortexes, which was incredible. again, by myself, it was very challenging. Each vortex kind of presented its own situation and experience. And I wanted to really tap into the energy of the space and access different parts of me and my emotions and creativity and tap into my thought process.

and how I approach different things because I think that then I can take that back into the business. How I communicate with clients, how different perspectives and challenges and things that help me be a better interior designer for my clients, but also better employer, better business owner. I stayed at one of the most beautiful resorts I’ve stayed at and I didn’t have to lift a finger. It was so nice. They were like, just if you need anything, just text us. And I was like, yeah, I’m not going to do that.

I can draw my own bath, I can light my own fire pit. And I was like, let me just try this, just because it’s here. And it was so nice to experience that because that is exactly what we’re creating for our clients. I was like, there’s something here. And typically this isn’t me, I’m definitely more of, I want to provide that experience for my clients.

And it was, it was cool to see it from the other side. And of course I was like, Oh, well I’m taking now. It’s like, I love this approach and definitely can learn from this. And again, feed this into the business. But beyond that, it was a time to express my gratitude for the journey that I’ve been on. Um, I’ve been on this grind for two and a half years. And like you said, it’s, it’s a running business is a lot of work. takes a specific type of mindset and you can, it’s not always, um, positivity and, and

and rainbows ahead and you have to stop and really look at that. so I wanted to reflect on all the transitions that I’m navigating and step outside my comfort zone to grow as a designer, owner, and a person.

That goes back to what we talked about before, which is you have to grow as a person for your business to grow. And I know that that sounds a little counterintuitive, but it’s so true that if you do that, if you work at that all the time and try to be better at what you’re who you are as a person, everything else gets better.

Right.

does. I think that, you know, especially when people decide that I want to, you know, that they want to start their own business or whether interior design or anything, I think there’s always the financial stability aspect that crosses people’s minds. And they’re like, I want to do this because I want to make a lot of money. But I think if you’re driven by that, it shows in, you know, how the business grows and the pace of how it grows and

Thanks.

kind of the returns on all of that. But I think if you’re driven and you hit it perfectly when you were saying about staying authentic and just really staying true to the vision and doing the right thing and ultimately helping other people. I think when you’re focused on that, the financial success or rewards are the byproduct of just at the end of the day being a good person. And I think that’s why we both try to support our clients and our community at the same time. Because I think that as

people as humans, we’re very blessed and we’re very fortunate. And our greatest gift is the ability to be able to give back and to help other people who truly need it.

I love that. Well, let’s take you into the future and imagine what your business is going to be like maybe a few years down the road with AI.

So AI, we’re starting to use it. I definitely use it on a daily basis when it comes to tone checking or clarifying ideas or thoughts, just to help me kind of organize things, I think. And that’s where the creative brain fighting with the strategic, the left and right brain battling each other at some point during my day.

I think sometimes I can check in and be like, help me organize these thoughts in a way that makes sense, especially if I’m trying to communicate it to other people too, because I think that creatives can communicate very quickly and don’t always think through all the details. And then my, you know, my left brain is telling me, no, well, this doesn’t make sense. And it’s not ready to share with the world yet. So I think that there’s benefit in that. I think as far as how it affects the interior design industry, I think that

It can be a helpful tool, but we recently, was funny, we had a client try to do their own rendering of kind of their design ideas, and it wasn’t really at all what they wanted. And so we, of course, by listening, and we heard, and we were able to kind of put together something more visual, appealing, that reflected what they wanted. But there was something, so the lesson from that, you know.

is that it that eliminates the personal element for what we’re striving for in design, the intuition, the relationship, the emotional connection that makes that space truly come alive. And it also

plays into the fact that we’re listening, the fact that we’re really designing for them because most clients don’t know what they want. So for them to try to use AI to design something for them, they have to be very, very specific. And most people can’t be because there’s too much to pinpoint and design for and around. And I think that’s where us being.

innate humans who want to connect. That’s where we’ll always have the benefit over AI and be able to successfully do that.

Yeah, well, and it is as that emotional connection and machines can’t do that, right? They just can’t do that. Well, that’s interesting. So we’ll have lots of discussions with designers over the next few years about that one topic because it is scary for some people and it’s also it’s a great tool if it’s used correctly. So you are always good to keep learning about that. Well, we’ve had a.

A very interesting conversation today and thank you for taking your time to do that. And I love ending these with three takeaways for our listeners. So what would you like to share?

Wow, okay. No, this was great. This was this was fun to talk about. Thanks for having me. I think my takeaways would be let’s say, well, I think we’ll start with choose your heart because I love like I said, I think those three words together are so powerful. Choose your heart, do it intentionally. Life and business will always present challenges, embrace them. Embrace the hard paths when it aligns with your growth and

take the easy paths when necessary, dive in to everything versus simplifying. think there’s power in both. The next takeaway, would say trust your instincts and stay authentic. I think whether in design, business or life, staying true to yourself, your vision, your values creates a kind of trust and energy that people are attracted to and notice. Authenticity is what builds those lasting relationships and

those relationships drive both personal and professional growth.

And I think step outside your comfort zone to grow. I think, you know, from launching my own firm to my experiences in Arizona, the moments where I intentionally stretch myself emotionally and creatively, strategically, these are the moments that will shape me the most. And growth comes from being willing to explore, reflect and embrace new perspectives.

Well, that’s perfectly said. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. And I know everybody’s going to love hearing this one. So thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me. It’s always good to talk with you and just talk about all things.

This week on the Creative Genius podcast, Gail Doby welcomes Elissa Grayer, the founder of Elissa Grayer Interior Design, for a deep dive into her 25-year journey from educational administration to luxury interior design. Elissa shares how she “made it up as she went along” before finding the professional community and coaching that transformed her firm from a seat-of-the-pants operation into a highly profitable, well-oiled machine.

Listen in as Elissa discusses the evolution of her firm’s structure and the “transition mode” she is currently navigating as she looks toward the next decade of her career. She defines the critical importance of financial transparency, revealing how her business achieved a dramatic bottom-line shift by gaining the confidence to charge her true worth and track every billable hour.

The conversation also explores the unique challenges of serving ultra-high-net-worth clients who may be demanding or entitled, and how Elissa maintains boundaries while delivering an outstanding, sophisticated experience. Plus, Elissa shares her perspective on the current “stagnated” real estate market in the New York suburbs and why she is looking toward hospitality and senior living as exciting new frontiers for her firm.

In this podcast, you’ll hear about:

If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full show notes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s14e6-shownotes

Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors.

Welcome to the Creative Genius podcast, Alisa. I want to talk with your personal story and start there and tell us how did you get into design?

Well, it actually, I’m one of the ones who came to it very organically. I had been in education, had been teaching, and then was working on charter schools and decided, my then husband and I decided that we were going to combine two apartments on Riverside Drive in New York City. And so I was, taken some time off from work. I just had my second child and I decided to take on the project and I did.

It was a total gut renovation. There was a lot of work. took about a year. I was very involved in the design, the layout, everything, and getting the job done, which as you know is really most of the job. And at the end of it, we had a beautiful apartment, and it just felt really good and comfortable and warm and welcoming, and everybody loved it. I loved it. Shortly after, I got divorced.

which was a very mutual thing. So we both were in a really good place about it with each other. We are still great friends. And he asked me if I would design and manage the joining of two apartments for him, for him and the girls who were my girls. So of course I said, yes, this would be a great thing. I’d love to make a wonderful home for them and for him. And he said, okay, I’ll buy you Volvo. And I said, okay, done.

I did.

I designed and project managed and filled that apartment with beautiful things and it came out really, really well. And I had to get a resale certificate number to start buying things, so I had a resale number. And then the electrician on the job said to me, I have a client who’s down in the village and she can’t make up her mind about something, would you come and help her?

someone else said, I heard you might be doing interior design, would you come and help me? And it just sort of snowballed like that. So I had no idea what I was doing, but I just knew I loved what I was doing. And then I decided to go to school to see if that would help. So I went to Parsons for a certificate in interior design. I already had a couple of master’s degrees. I didn’t want any more. And I just…

just was working. started working and I never stopped and that was 24 years ago. It be 25 years in February.

So what were your other degrees? I didn’t know that.

Well, I had a degree in administration planning and social policy from the Harvard Ed School. Then I had a degree in elementary education and master’s from Leslie College, Graduate School of Education. And then I was ABD, which means everything but the dissertation at Columbia. I was getting a degree in educational administration at Columbia Teachers College. So that was…

A lot of schooling, I’m a big believer in school, but I just didn’t want to do anymore. So there’s a lot of stuff I did not learn and a lot of stuff you can only learn on the job. So it’s kind of a toss up. I miss not having worked for someone. I know that that’s an amazing experience and I always lamented the fact that I never had a role model or anyone to just look at and say, that’s how you do things.

So I just kind of made it up as I went along.

I hate to say it, but one of the people would probably not be good role models on running the business. Yeah. So it’s in some ways, I think it’s better to figure it out for yourself, but.

That’s true. Yeah, true.

Maybe if you have a background in business, which as you know very well, I do not. I’m a liberal arts person through and through. So I know we’re going to get to this, but it really wasn’t until I met you that I started understanding the business part of the business. Before that, I was just flying by the seat of my pants. There was no internet world back then to go to. mean, now you can basically buy a business plan.

on the internet for a couple hundred dollars and sign up for a coaching group. It just feels a lot more open and accessible than it did back then. When I would go to the market days at the New York Design Center and basically listen for crumbs of wisdom from one of the famous designers who were speaking and I’d try and figure out what they were doing. yeah, just had to figure it out.

Well, tell us about your firm right now. Who’s on your team? What are their responsibilities?

Well, we are in a transitioning mode. The ideal team is, and it’s not ideal right now, so that’s why I’m starting with the ideal. The ideal situation is to have a leadership team that is myself, my design director, who’s my number two, and then have an operations person as a third arm in the group.

We do not have that person anymore. We had to make some staffing changes. So I now no longer have a real operations person. And what we have done is we have brought in a fractional CFO from outside to be kind of our financial advisory arm. We have brought in a bookkeeper, CPA, and we have an office admin right now.

Mm-hmm.

We’ve also brought in an outside marketing kind of AI focused consultant to help us with marketing and especially as it relates to the new changes with what AI is doing to our market and our SEOs. I’ve also got a consultant who’s working on our website and I have an outside tech support person.

because the operations person that I previously had did a lot of those things, some better than others, but was really kind of responsible for a lot of that. So I have now created a team of different people to kind of partially, almost all the way make up for that third person. I also have a full-time designer in the office. I have a

part-time designer who is in Boston who works remotely. We have an office admin person. And then I have two very fabulous interns who are coming in a couple days a week who do all those things like, you know, drop off this sample, pick up this product, know, do, you know, open the door for this vendor. So we have a lot of hands in the mix right

Yeah, it sounds like quite a few.

Yeah, it’s quite a crew, but it’s working. We’re making it work. We do need another designer, but we are we’ll get there. We’re just not. It’s hard to find a good person, as you know.

Yeah, you have to your time with that and definitely wait for that right person.

Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, we are.

So let’s go back to the past and this has been quite a while, probably seven, eight years ago that you started working with us somewhere in that neighborhood. What was going on with your business at that time? Why did you come or reach out to us?

Yes.

Uh-huh.

Well, I had actually been following you from afar from, I don’t know, it must have been, when did you start doing those podcasts where people could call in? Was that like 20 years ago?

I just got 18 years ago. Yeah. Uh-huh. Sure. I was at home.

Actually, I think, probably don’t remember this, but I actually asked a question on one of those things and you said to me something like, very kindly, but like, think you need to get a coach to help you with some of this stuff. And I was like, yeah, you know what, you’re probably right. I had started, I’d done a year with a coach who’s still around.

This was probably like 15 years ago and just wasn’t able to follow through, didn’t really get the information that I needed. And so just kept on plugging along until I went to a dinner in High Point. You know, you get invited to these dinners, these small intimate dinners, and I think this was a trad home dinner. And a woman sitting next to me was named Julia Kirkendall. And she, we were having this great conversation and she was telling me about her business.

And I have a feeling that there’s one other person from that group there and I’m not remembering, because I was so focused on Julia. I just fell in love with her warmth and her honesty and her openness. And she was saying that she was running this great business, very successful, the kind of business that I wanted, which was busy working, doing great projects, kind of under the radar, not really out and about.

And she said she credited her success to this coach that she’d been working with named Gail Dobie. And I said, huh, interesting. And she said, there’s this thing called the boardroom, which is a smaller group for just high earning designers. And at that point, my business was doing quite well, in spite of me, I have to say.

And I thought, well, I could be in that group. That sounds like something I would love to have. I’d love to have a cohort and a group of people that kind of were facing the same problems, all led by a fabulous coach who was going to tell me to run my business, which was what I’d always wanted to know. So I went to one of your genius exchanges. It was in Denver.

I showed you my financials and you said, you definitely could be part of this group. said, yay. Then we had a one-on-one. guess what brought me, just to go back to answer your question, what really brought me there was that I knew I was leaving a lot of money on the table. I knew I was not running efficiently. I knew that I was kind of flying by the seat of my pants when it came to running my business.

have a great understanding of a balance sheet or an income statement. I didn’t really know what a PNL was. I knew I had money in the bank and I knew that we were using Studio, we were billing. I was a big step up from the old days when I would just be giving my credit card over the phone as I was driving down the West Side Highway to crab it and they would bill me for the fabric, send it off and I would forget to bill the client. Like that’s literally how my business ran in the old days.

So I was way past that, but I knew I needed more help. So went to the Genius Exchange, met with you, had a VIP, and to my great happiness and fortune, I was placed in a wonderful group of people, a new boardroom that you were forming, and we got to work with you and we got to share our experiences with each other, and it really changed my life, changed my business.

Well, and you’re all still really close friends. Yes.

We are. We’re very, very, very close, as are, I think, all the people in the boardrooms that you set up. I mean, you created a wonderful environment that got people trusting each other and talking about their problems and being vulnerable, and then getting help and solutions. you know, the first boardroom ever that you started is still incredibly close. They still do retreats every year. The second one, I think also, we were the third boardroom.

and we are very tight. And then there’s a whole nother fourth one that went on and then it just kind of expanded. And so now you’ve got a much larger group, but it’s really the same camaraderie and the same feeling. So it’s all good.

Well, I think it’s so important to have somebody that you can talk to and really feel comfortable. Yeah, and not worry that you’re competing with them. Right. Some people are in the same markets, but…

I know, but there’s no competition. You feel like when you’re part of a group like that, you just feel like, first of all, you understand there’s enough business to go around. And obviously, you don’t want to be doing the exact same marketing things, but there’s plenty to learn from and plenty of ways to tweak it and make it different. Tina and I are in the same market. both in New York and New York City. She works in Westchester. I work in the city. We’re very close and we share everything.

It just, you know, everybody has a different style, everybody has a different approach, and I think it’s the generosity of spirit that makes the people that you’ve selected for your boardrooms and for your Pearl Collective group so special.

Well, it’s been a lot of fun. for us, it’s really the fun part is the relationships with people. What are some of the biggest things that you’ve implemented that have helped you over the years?

Well, a couple things, many things. From a financial perspective, doing planning, like kind of understanding cash flow and what’s going to happen if you don’t get a client. What is your cash flow every month? What does that look like? And where are your ebbs and flows going to be coming? The other thing that I really learned from you that I think

brought me to tears the first time we ever talked about it was how to bill for my time. You are so good at giving people the confidence to bill for their time and you really insist on billing hourly and tracking that hourly time so you can really see how much time you’re spending on things. I was just making up design fees, pulling them out of my head like, this looks like a $50,000 job and this one I think they’ll like it if I say 80.

And it had no bearing on reality or what I was actually at the time I was actually spending on things. And so I ended up losing, I think you pointed out that it was $800,000 that I had left on the table. And I was like, my God. So tracking my time, which I’m still terrible at, but it is my goal every month to get my time in. Everyone in the office tracks their time. We bill hourly. We don’t feel bad about it.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

We bill for everything we do to move a project forward. I mean, that’s really kind of changed our bottom line in the way I look at my business. between the billing, the forecasting, of knowing how much money you should have in the bank, how much money you should be making before you can hire another person, just some very basic business practices along with the…

just the ability and the desire to dream big. think that was another thing that you really impressed on all of us is, what do you want? What do you want out of this life? What do you want out of this business? What can it bring you? And where can you go with it? And what are you gonna do with it when you wanna retire? So all those things are things that we got to talk about.

Yeah. And I think too that sometimes people don’t dream big enough and there is such a potential here. I think we’ve had 15 people so far that I know of that have hit a million dollars net profit. It’s a pretty dramatic number. have one person that hit 2 million and it is just so exciting to see that happen. And for me, what I love about this is I know that you all can have

So that’s.

financial security and have the kind of income that other people dream of. so interior design does give you that opportunity and it’s amazing.

It does. But it really needs, it doesn’t just happen. Like without a plan, it does not happen. And without a coach, it does not happen. So I think you used to share with us all those statistics about the interior design profession as a whole and where people in the boardroom and the pro collective kind of fell on that continuum. And we were always like, first of all, just to get into the group, you have to be at a certain level.

We were always higher, which just meant that, you can do it. There’s a way.

There absolutely is. In fact, this year, think the industry in 24 was a 3 % net was an average. our designers as a whole was 13, but we had people go as high as 40%. So, you know, we definitely saw people achieving different things. Yeah. And it really does mean that if you can focus on doing the business right, you can make a lot of money at this.

You can and you can also just the confidence to charge number one what you’re worth and number two to not give away discounts. Like when I hear people, designers say, well, I just give my clients the net price and you know, I just, and I’m like, why are you doing that? That’s just wrong. Like you don’t need to do that. It’s not, it’s not the way to make money in this business. Clients love it, but it’s really, it screws up the rest of us.

Exactly, exactly. I hope somebody listens to this and pays attention and does that because you’ve got to charge what you’re worth. my God. You do.

You do and we run two businesses. have a design business, is, you know, where the creativity and the project, well, project management is a whole nother business, but just the design is one business and then product is another business. We’re basically operating a store and you don’t walk into Bloomingdale’s and say, can I have this sweater at what you paid for it? Because I want that discount. Like, no, you just don’t do that. You just pay. Bloomingdale says the sweater $75. Do you want it or not? That’s your price.

And so I feel like we, you know, we have, we’re operating a store, and we get things at a special discount because of our relationship with vendors and because of our hard work and experience in the business. And, you know, we get to sell it at the price that the market tells us we can sell it at, which is, I mean, we sell at MSRP. And we do often for furniture, we do less 10%. So that’s how we do it.

So they are getting a little bit of a discount, you know, that’s just a, that’s being, that’s a kindness. don’t share the fabric and the wallpaper and everything else is always just MSRP.

Sure. Great. I love it. Well, you’ve done a lot of huge jobs over the years. What are some of the ways that you got those jobs?

Well,

So it’s interesting, we get our jobs in two ways. One is through relationships, which I would call relationship marketing, which is just having relationships with builders and architects and clients. You always taught us that your past clients are your best and it’s your best ROI is going back to those clients and seeing if they have anyone they can refer you to and that’s really how we’ve gotten some.

very nice big jobs, but we also get jobs from people just Googling us. very early on, I made sure I had a really good website that did not inflate who I was or what I did, but just showed the work and talked to and showed our team and pictures of the team. if you say you have a team, you have a team. You don’t just say you have one even if you don’t.

And so I always got a lot of great clients from just people who would move to the area. They would Google, you know, interior designer, Ryan New York and get my website would pop up and they would relate to it and then call us. So it’s a little crazy that I would get clients that way, but we did. And I think, you know, I paid a lot of attention to the website and the SEOs and how to make sure that

we were showing up in searches and now I’ve kind of turned my attention to AI and chat GPT searches and how do you make sure that you show up there? Because if they can’t find you, they can’t hire you. So you need to always be able to be found for however you’re going to do it. So both of those ways, but you know.

Well, and also, I didn’t mention this to you in our questions, but you have a place in the Hamptons too. I do. How fabulous. Yeah. Yeah. You still have green trees.

Here right now.

I know. Well, they’re greenish brownish and it’s really an ugly day outside. We had some for a minute. But yeah, I do have a place in the Hampton. So I am also, you know, actively out here meeting people and trying to I have a lot of friends who are real estate agents. That’s a very I forgot to mention that that’s actually one of my best sources of referrals are from real estate agents because you really they become a very trusted advisor.

when they’re working with someone and helping them find a house. So we get a lot of referrals from them. But yeah, I’m doing kind of the same thing out here. It’s a lot to always be out and doing things. But I have found that if you get involved with things that you really love, organizations that you really care about, then you meet people and they care about the same thing. And that becomes a common ground.

You know, often clients come from that.

That’s so fun. Well, and you did a show house there too, didn’t you?

I’ve done several show houses out here actually over the years. The traditional home used to have a show house that benefits Southampton Hospital and then it was taken over by cottages and gardens. So I’ve done that one I think three times and then this past summer I did one that was a holiday house which benefits breast cancer and those are always a lot of fun.

Mm.

Do you get jobs off of those?

We’ve gotten calls. had one person who bought the house this past, not this summer, but the summer before when I did the house. And she called, I had done the dining room, and she said that she really wanted to hire us. And then I guess her husband ex-nade that decision once he heard that it wasn’t free. So that was…

That was nice, but no other than that I have not and I know people have I think it I think I don’t know I don’t know why you do or you don’t I think it’s being in the right place at the right time I think if you’re if the right people come through you can get a great job and if not, know, it doesn’t doesn’t happen. So Kip’s Bay is my next One that I’d like to do in New York. That’s the big one And I think that you know

if you really knock it out of the park, then a lot of people do get clients from that. But you don’t really do a show house to get clients, because that is a very iffy proposition. You do it because you believe in the charity that they are supporting, and it’s great to be able to work with vendors and media people, and you meet nice people, and you meet great designers, but it’s really kind of a labor of love. You spend a lot of money doing a show house.

Right.

So you have to really believe in what you do.

Well for sure and it has to be in a year where you can afford the time and the money to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know some people have spent 100, 200 thousand on the houses. Absolutely.

Absolutely, no matter what. mean, had Hooker Furniture was incredibly generous for this past show house, the holiday house, and they donated all the furniture. paid for the shipping, Arte donated the wallpaper, I had the lights, you everything was offered to me, but you still have to, a lot of it, have to get there, a lot, and you have to, you know, disassemble things, you have to get painters, you have to do, I get all your trades in, and not even to mention the hours that you don’t.

get to spend on clients because you are working on the show house or you’re at the show house or whatever it is.

Yeah, it’s a lot. Wow. Well, let’s talk a little bit about the ultra high end clients, which you have dealt with lots and lots of them. Yes. What are some of the challenges that you’ve experienced?

Well, I’m going to speak about the more difficult ones because there are a lot of very high net worth clients who are lovely and who are appreciative. But then there are also some who are demanding and a little entitled and think that because they have a lot of money and they’re paying you a lot of money that you should really be there at their beck and call.

and that their time is very important and they need to communicate when they need to communicate. So you can get a text at 9.30 at night or at six in the morning or emails or on the weekend with lots of questions. And I know you’re supposed to be setting boundaries. I totally get that and I try. But when it’s college and you know that that might be your only opportunity to get an answer that you need, sometimes I do answer.

So there are lot of expectations that you’re going to be doing things the way they want you to do them and that you are going to always be there to answer every question and you know, and it’s going to that their project is really your life. It isn’t always it’s a project one of many. But so it’s a very that part can be tough, but they also

Mm-hmm.

You know, they want to be surprised and they want to be inspired and they are hiring you because they want something different than what they see and what their friends have and they want an experience really out of their design process that’s going to be a little bit different than the rest of their life. So you’re always kind of thinking, I’m always kind of thinking, how am going to make this?

And I think this way actually I shouldn’t say it for all my clients, you know, some of these very high network people are incredibly sophisticated and they’ve seen it all and they’ve been all over. So it’s a little bit of a higher bar to kind of think, how am I going to really make this an outstanding experience and design for them?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it’s hard.

It is, but it’s a great challenge. I think that by being who we are and showing that you really care about every detail and you care about them as people, because you’re in their business and so you need to be discreet and you need to be respectful as you would with anybody. But I think that they appreciate that. They appreciate being taken care of.

Mm hmm. I’m sure they do. So I think a book to add in here is Unreasonable Hospitality. That’s such a good book and gives some great ideas about little odds and ends of things that you can do. Oh, okay. It’s a great book. Be sure and check that out. And the other thing I would say is there’s a great book called The Next Conversation. And if you have difficulty having conversations with people, that would be another

I’m writing it down.

great book to read.

Well, I have to tell you, I will read that book because I just had to present a very large bill for time billing to a client who’s a very high net worth client, but who doesn’t really understand how much time things take and that we, cause they have done some of this stuff on their own and they think it’s kind of easy and you know, no big deal. And I was really, really nervous about it because I knew I had to be.

Confident and I had to just hand it over and I knew all the hours were justified, but I still was kind of waiting for them to Say what this is ridiculous We’re not gonna move forward because I’ve had clients say that they get a big bill and they’re like I didn’t know it’s gonna cost this much and You want to say well, what do you think we’ve been doing this whole time? How do you think of his habit? Right, but so there is a certain If they haven’t worked with a designer before there’s there can be a little sticker shock

all this stuff.

And so I actually asked ChatGPT for some help. I got a little counseling on the side.

how to approach this.

I wish I’d

Yeah. Well, it’s a great book and it’s one to be on your nightstand because I think for everybody, it’s probably one of the best books I’ve read this year.

Wow. Yeah. Okay. Good. Well, I love your book recommendations. I always do. I have, I have most of them. I wish I could say I’d read them all,

I had them, I buy them. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with my reading. That’s part of it. So how have your clients changed over the years?

Well, I live in a very unique area. It is a suburb of New York City. It’s very suburbs, I should say, and they’re very expensive with very high taxes. It used to be that New York City was the hub of everything, and so everybody came there. And then after these younger people would work in the city for whatever, five, six, seven, eight, nine years, they would move out to the suburbs.

starter home, which you know, was always large and usually new construction. And then they would want to hire us, give it character and you know, fill it up with things because they basically moved out with their stuff from college. And these are people that worked in finance, so they had, you know, a lot of disposable income. Then COVID hit. And people started working from home, which was also a boom to our business because we had

to.

You know, if we’ll look around and go, my God, I need a new this and I need all new furniture and I need a place to study. I, so that was very, great time for business. But after COVID, when people were no longer going back into the office in New York city, people started leaving in droves and there just wasn’t that, that flow out from the city. and people don’t need to live in Westchester anymore. They can work from anywhere. So we have felt, that our,

area is kind of feels a little depressed now as compared to you know five six years ago whereas other parts of the country where I have other designer friends like in Florida or in Texas or North Carolina or Colorado it’s booming there. There’s been this big kind of migration movement where people look around and they go why am I living in this area where I have to pay incredibly high taxes you know where I’m

kind of there’s a lot of population density. I have to send my kids a lot of places to private school, a of suburbs, and it’s just super expensive to live here. And so they leave. So it just doesn’t feel as vibrant as it used to. There’s a lot, the other issue is people are not, the people that aren’t leaving are holding onto their houses because they can’t afford to move.

Mm-hmm

You know, and this is not these are not the ultra wealthy. These are like the bread and butter clients that we used to have all the time that would buy another house and then they would move to a bigger house and we’d work with them. They can’t buy another house, so they’re not leaving. So no one’s able to come in to those houses, you know, so it’s just it’s kind of stagnated and real estate sales are way, way down. And so our new home construction starts. So we’re you know, it’s a little bit it’s a little bit tougher.

Mm-hmm.

There are groups of people that are definitely not affected. We’re doing more work in the city now, it seems like, because if people are going to be, if they want to live, if they’re city people, they’re going to stay in the city no matter what happens.

Mm-hmm.

We’ve done a bunch of homes for people who have moved to Florida. So that’s been kind of fun to see parts of Florida. And, you know, it’s just a constant, what’s next? What’s going to happen next? Or should we keep devoting our energies and efforts to this neck of the woods? Or is it time to try and expand somewhere else? The Hamptons is always great. People really love it out here, but a lot it’s, you know.

It comes and goes. it’s a little bit, feel like Northeast designers, especially in New York, the New York area, it’s a little bit tough right now.

Yeah, I’m sure it is. It’s definitely the financial market has been good. The stock market has actually been strong. So some of the people in the financial markets are probably doing okay.

They are, but you know what? They don’t all live here anymore. Yes, no, there are definitely people here for whom the tariffs don’t really mean anything because they don’t really care if prices go up 10 % or 15 % or 20%. They’re not price sensitive like that. So those are obviously the clients that we want. those are the ones we’re marketing to. And you know, it would be great if I could just have.

Interesting.

three of those all every year and that would be it. I’d be super happy. You know, we have a lot of real big mix.

I’m sure

So what is your vision going forward? You’ve been doing this for a while. huh. It is.

I still feel like I love what I do and probably, I mean, I’m 62. I’m thinking of working for another 10 years or so, maybe more, 10, 12 years. I would really love to keep my business going and hopefully pass it on to someone.

I

who is in the firm right now, who I think would be a great, great, great fit. So we’re kind of working towards that.

Mm-hmm. And that’s your second-in-command. Mm-hmm. Yep. And she’s been working for you for how many years? Okay. Amazing. Well, she’s an amazing person. is.

Yep.

Nine years.

She absolutely is and I couldn’t do what I do without her. She’s one of those very special people that cares. She never ever acted like an employee. She always acted like it was her company and it all depended, not in a bad way, in the best way possible, meaning that she cared so much about making everything run well and making sure the clients were happy.

It’s an attitude that not everybody has. Some people kind of just sort of say, well, I didn’t get to that. I’ll deal with it tomorrow or well, I’m seeing that client wasn’t happy. It’s OK. They’ll get over it. You know, that’s that’s not an attitude you want to have with anyone that works for you. And she from the very beginning was like, this is we’re going to make this. This is going to be amazing. We’re going to do it together. I’m like, you know, right here in the trenches with you. And it’s been great.

Mm-hmm. She is great. She’s amazing. Well, how do you see your role changing over the next 10 years?

Well, I think I would love to be more just, you know, either I’m doing a lot of the design right now and the design kind of the setting the design direction for all the clients and then also going out and doing a lot of the marketing and the kind of the networking and all that stuff. So I think it will kind of.

continue that way, I probably would like to do more of the marketing and kind of start to, I’d love to develop more design in house. So Christine could take that over and really do a lot of that as the design director. But it’s something that I love doing, so it’s going to be hard to give it up. But that’s kind of…

you know, the way I sort of see it changing, is become more of someone that’s getting out there, bringing in more of the clients and the big jobs, and then having the design done in-house and led by the team.

Yeah, and as you’re starting, you’ve got 10 years to think about this. So in that 10 years, hopefully in that at least five years ahead, you’re getting your succession plan in place. Really thinking about what that structure needs to be. So yeah, perfect timing to be planning that out.

Yep, now I think about it a lot for sure. You know, you’ve always advised us to buy a building, to have that kind of, and do that, and I would love to be able to do that as another additional source of income and developing it and maybe going into thinking I would love to sort of, we’ve been so focused on high-end residential, I would love to do some hospitality and maybe some multifamily and some

senior living spaces. So it would be great to be able to kind of grow the business in that way too.

Mm hmm. Well, those are big, big things to do. Big shifts for your business. it sounds exciting.

It is. It is. That’s what’s so cool about this job is there’s so many different ways you can go, things you can do and never have to stay still. Our days are, every day is a different day.

What are you most looking forward to?

In life, I am most looking forward to spending time with my daughters and their eventual children, which will hopefully happen. I’m looking forward to grandchildren. It will be lovely.

Not that I’m rushing my girls, but it’d be great. And I’m looking forward to the business just kind of being a little more of a well-oiled machine. always feel like, and that is, the good thing about our business is every day is different, and the bad thing about our business is every day is different. there’s always something happening, some contractor that doesn’t do what they’re supposed to, some client who doesn’t understand what’s happening and gets upset.

You know, no matter how hard you plan for all these things, there’s always something, but I would love it to feel more automated in some ways, you know, and I think that we keep learning new things and adapting those things to what we’re doing in new systems and new ways. And I think it would be great if we had like a couple of years where it just was kind of, we just knew exactly what we were doing and everything worked out.

I wonder if that’s possible. Great if it was.

It would be good. You can sell that. Huh? could bottle that and sell that.

I know. Well, I guess what I’m saying is I would love to see, I am looking forward to just constantly keeping the improvements going. So making things run better, smoother, more profitably, and that’s my challenge because that is not my comfort zone. to me, I love learning and that’s what I love learning about is how to do it better.

Mm-hmm.

I’m looking forward to doing it better.

Well, that’s great. Well, let’s end our conversation with three takeaways, something that people people to take from this and learn and maybe apply to their business.

Okay, so I wrote these down in advance because you I have no memory left but the three things that jumped into my mind when I heard I was going be asked about three takeaways. The first one was to have a plan, to make a plan. If you don’t have a plan, if you don’t have a roadmap, you’re not going to get where you’re going. You will just, every day will be a new day and a distractible day and you just won’t get to where you want to go. My second thing is

Get a coach, have someone who you trust, who can help you just do things each day a bit better and who will be your cheerleader and who will help you when you have hard times. And then the third thing was to find your people. Find the people that you can communicate with, connect with, you can trust, that you feel

will be there for you. It can have your back. Like if something happens, know, someone abscons with all your profits or you have a bad employee and you need to get rid of them, but just your group that can kind of gather around you and help you. That your peers, not a coach, but peers.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, those are great. And I really appreciate you being on the podcast.

Well, thank you for having me. It’s always so good to see you and talk with

Same here. Well, thank you for being here.

All right, take care, thank you.

This week on the Creative Genius Podcast, Gail Doby welcomes master photographer and luxury sales consultant Jeffrey Shaw to share the insider knowledge he gained from spending over 40 years serving the most affluent families in the US. Jeffrey shares that everything he teaches comes from intimate conversations with this clientele, where he noticed a division between what luxury brands market and what clients actually say.

Listen in as Jeffrey reveals what truly prevents designers from stepping into the high-end market: their own fear of being uncomfortable or feeling like an imposter. He shares his personal journey of transitioning from an outsider studying high-end stores like Bergdorf Goodman to becoming a customer there. Jeffrey emphasizes that the worst mistake you can make is trying to be a fake version of yourself because affluent buyers will “smell that a million miles away”.

Jeffrey offers a masterclass on the psychology of luxury buying: he explains why they are not only looking for skill and integrity but are also highly intuitive and perceptive—a trait necessary for their success. He reveals the one thing they expect but will never ask for: that you stay a few steps ahead of them, doing their thinking on their behalf. Finally, Jeffrey provides practical advice on up-leveling your ideal client profile, removing friction from your process, and motivating clients in turbulent economic times.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about:

If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full show notes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s14e5-shownotes

Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors.

Well, welcome to the Creative Genius podcast, Jeffrey. I’m so glad to have you here and spend time with you again. And by the way, I have to share you are one of our favorite speakers that are one of our recent boardroom retreats. And I just really valued that time that you shared with our people and they loved, loved, loved what you had to say. So we’re going to talk about your book and it’s Sell to the Rich, which is so appropriate for our industry.

Thank you.

It is, is. Thank you. I had such a great time with your group too and honestly I said probably that day and I’ve said many times since, hanging out with designers is such a complete joy to me because who doesn’t love hanging out with hardworking people who have good taste?

Well, you have good taste. Yes, and you are in very much the visual business anyway, or at least you were serving people as a photographer. But I want to talk about how you started with this and how you learned so much about the luxury market.

Sure.

Yeah, a really crazy journey, right? I mean, the fact that I had the opportunity as a family portrait photographer for many of the most affluent families in the US for more than 40 years, just crazy. I didn’t come from that background at all, but I was very, very clear after a few years of struggle, it was very clear to me that these are the people I was meant to serve. And that’s such an inner feeling, right? I mean, how you get to that point of realizing that, you know, who you’re meant to serve and…

to realize it wasn’t a world I knew. So, I mean, I am forever grateful for the fact I was able to break into this very challenging market and then spend 40 years literally hanging out in their closets, right? So everything I teach today, talk about, write about, is always going back to those intimate conversations with an affluent clientele that I often found.

how luxury brands were marketing, how they were speaking, how they were showing up in the lives of these clients was very different than what I was hearing from the clients. And that was, that’s the valuable contrast because I was getting, felt the real them, which really on their mind and realizing the division between when you’re affluent, you’re such a target of marketing and your experience, those moments in the closet, their real lives were very different.

And so everything I know today about luxury came from those moments of intimacy and getting to hear, you know, really being embedded and nothing is more personal to people than their children. So, you the lives I had in photographing their kids and their families really opened up very intimate conversations. And I felt like I got to see an inside perspective that quite frankly, most people in the luxury business do not.

That’s amazing. What do you think keeps people from approaching and serving the luxury market and maybe feeling like they are not imposters, that they should be able to serve these people?

And what I love about that question, Gail, is that actually I really woke up to that at your event at Pearl Collective because I doubt you recall, but there were a number of questions from the audience right in the moment, as well as people that came up to me afterwards and a very common question, so much so that I ended up writing a newsletter about it. And the question was to me, how did you get comfortable working with a clientele in a world you didn’t grow up in?

Mm-hmm.

So I realized what’s keeping most people from stepping into the world of self-serving a high-end client is probably their own fear of being comfortable. Their belief that they won’t be comfortable because they didn’t come from that world. But here’s a newsflash. 99.9 % of people serving luxury buyers didn’t come up and grow up in that world, right? If you did, you’re probably not a sales associate at Dior, right? I mean, it’s just the reality of it.

who are serving this clientele. And that’s not to say that, and hopefully it’s true, that in the years of serving this clientele that we actually step into that market. You one of my favorite stories to tell, which is very foundational to my work, is that as a startup photographer in my 20s, and not knowing this clientele before, in the process of rebranding who I would become to serve this clientele.

I spent a lot of time at high end stores in New York City and my favorite one was Bergdorf Goodman. I felt like a fish out of water going to Bergdorf Goodman. I knew it wasn’t the world I was from, but I went there to understand the world of the people I was going to serve. I can say today, I mean, without, you know, just to make the point and not to brag at all, but you know, to see your life transition from being an outsider going to Bergdorf Goodman to learn.

to years later and not that many years later becoming a customer of Bergdorf Goodman and now decades later I’m an ongoing customer of Bergdorf Goodman and have a personal shopper there. So that transition to me is not to brag but it’s to represent the journey. So no, wasn’t, I think what holds most people back is they believe they’re not comfortable or going to be comfortable serving this clientele. You just have to be yourself.

Mm-hmm.

The worst thing you can do is being an imposter. The worst thing you can do is put on a facade, because they will smell that a million miles away. They’re not interested in a fake version of you. I never tried to hide where I came from. It was irrelevant. I was there to do a job, and I was there to do it well. And to me, comfortable is about belonging. And belonging is your individual choice.

Mm.

I believe we all should decide that we belong by birth by birthright we belong in any room we choose to be with regardless of where we came from or are you know any any other circumstances we have a right to decide we belong in any room regardless of gender race sexual orientation whatever it might be a social economic status you deserve to belong in any room you choose to be in well so

It’s an internal feeling. I feel like even at my early 20s, I had this feeling like I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what it’s gonna look like, but I belong here. I’m just going to make myself comfortable. And then as you do, it becomes a very positive cycle of as you get more and more comfortable, you get elevated and elevated. Next thing you know, you’re a customer at the very same store that you used to go to to study.

I love that. And I think that you could not have said that better because today I think a lot of people do exactly what you said. They may try to be somebody that they’re not. They need to be authentic to who they are and really care about the person that they’re serving instead of trying to be perceived in a certain way. So it’s more internal what you need to do versus the external. So just be aware of that.

they feel your level of conviction and commitment to them. To this day, I still operate that way as a speaker. Before I walk on stage, I always remind, because I’m still a nervous speaker. It still makes me nervous, it always will, right? But what helps me to get past that is to shift the spotlight from me to the audience. before I walk on stage, I remind myself that no matter what happens, keep going.

And that’s my mantra. And what that means to me is if I fall off the stage, keep going. If the audio goes out, keep going. If the slides go out, keep going. Because it reminds me that simple phrase, no matter what happens, keep going. It reminds me that I’m there in service. So I believe the audience, in that case, the speaking audience, I believe they feel that level of commitment and conviction. And so do affluent buyers, more so than most. They don’t care where you came from.

They don’t care even if you’re comfortable. will honestly, they will try to probably try to make you feel comfortable because they see in you something that, you know, and I could tell so many stories of examples and I won’t go into all of them, but I mean, I’ve had so many circumstances where I could tell somebody saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself yet. And success minded people love that. And there’s a correlation between success minded people and affluent buyers.

They love seeing potential in somebody and being a part of your journey and pulling it out. So don’t cover that up, be authentic, give people the chance to see something in you that you don’t see in yourself and they’ll pull you up with them. it’s honestly, gives me chills to this day. It’s a gorgeous, beautiful experience.

It is really amazing. I’m so glad you shared that because that is co-creation at its best. When the client is actually part of the journey of making you better at what you’re doing. So I think that’s a great approach and a wonderful nugget to share. So what do you think that luxury buyers really want and what do they expect from the people that are providing service to them?

You

You know, sometimes I overlook saying this, but obviously they need skill and they’re looking for skill and excellence, right? They don’t hire anybody, but here’s the thing. And I always say this at my speaking events, I’m assuming anybody in my audience and certainly your gathering of amazing designers, like the fact they’re there tells me they’re good at what they do and they striving for excellence. So they wouldn’t be showing up to industry events, right? So that’s table stakes. So obviously they’re expecting skill and excellence, but they’re also expecting, you know, as we said,

absolute integrity. you just, gosh, they, I think one of the greatest surprises of working with this clientele is realizing for a clientele that can so easily be written off as being shallow and materialistic. Here’s a big wake up call. They are actually the most intuitive, perceptive clients you will ever work with. And think about it, they have to be. In part because,

And I love studying this and observing it and I don’t know that I have a final conclusion to it because in part, think they are highly perceptive because they’ve had to become perceptive to people wanting to take things from them. And just wanting to, you know, be after their money. So I think there’s a way in which they became perceptive because their antenna is up. But I also have noticed that that high level of perception and reading energy and intuition.

is also a characteristic of success. and the example I can give of that is that my clients, my photo-harvey clients were primarily Wall Street folks. Think about it, Wall Street is almost all intuition, right? It’s just really like, where’s the market going? What’s it, they, to succeed at a very high level, they have a knowing in their gut that surpasses any other clientele I’ve ever worked with. So knowing that, you have to be in.

There is no pulling the wool over their eyes, right? I also think because they expect straightforwardness. know, so often luxury can look like over-gilded accessories and, you know, when really what they’re looking for is straightforwardness in every aspect. Like I’m a huge believer in pricing strategies being clean and clear. Everything’s rounded off, vague. Don’t nickel and dime. Don’t…

have all these extra charges. If you have to travel for a job, just build it in. Like don’t start having conversations about, know, I have to charge you $100 for travel. It’s like, my gosh, that’s just be straightforward. So I think those are some of the things that people don’t expect. And then lastly, I’ll say, which I think is probably the most important, something they expect, but they will never ask for is that they’re expecting you to stay a few steps ahead of them.

They love that more than anything. Like you’re doing their thinking on their behalf. You’ve thought of the thing that needs to be done before they thought of it. You hit a concern before they even realized that you took care of things before they were a problem. They don’t think to ask for that, but they live their lives in a way that they expect the people around them to be operating that way. And it’s very tricky, because like I they won’t outwardly say, I want you to stay three steps ahead of me.

They won’t say that. I got news for you. They are expecting that you do. Because the standard is you keep up with them. But they’re never looking to be at standard level. They’re always looking to excel. So they’re looking for service providers that don’t just stay with them, but are actually a few steps ahead of them. They won’t ask for it, but they’re expecting it.

That is such a great piece of advice about that. And I think I was talking to one of my clients this week in a VIP that I was doing with her and she wants to keep up leveling her service. And we were talking about the book, Unreasonable Hospitality, which is such a fabulous book. just understanding that you have to take things further than most people would ever begin to think about. And it’s not just doing design, but it’s doing all the things around design.

Yeah, is upleveling your thinking and everything. I love to take everything in the normal world and put it into the exceptional world, right? So I don’t look at it as customer relationships. I look at it as customer bonds, right? Because to have a goal to create a bond with somebody is different than a relationship. you know, customer, it’s not customer service as much as it is staying a step, a few steps ahead of them, because you’re delivering at a level they wouldn’t even ask for. So, you know,

There’s, when you want to operate at an exceptional level, you have to realize, fundamentally, and I often teach this my coaching clients, that at some point you have to make the decision to be different. And being different scares some people. But you can’t stand out in your field and you can’t be exceptional until at some point you say to yourself and commit to it that I’m gonna be different than all the rest in every way, shape, or form. And it’s lonely.

Mm-hmm.

You know, the expression lonely at the top, I don’t think even comes close to feeling like when you are trying to be exceptional in your industry and you can’t relate any longer to 90 % of the people around you, which honestly, which is why things like your group and working with you is so important because that’s where it becomes essential to hang out with people who have a desire to operate at that level, right? But then you get out into a bigger, bolder world and you realize that you are amongst the very few.

I was left to feel entirely alone in my industry as a photographer because there was no one operating at my level. I mean, most photographers are trying to figure out how to make $500 a sale and I came out of the gate saying, I am not gonna wake up in the morning for less than 10,000, right? It just was, it was so extreme that I couldn’t, who do you hang out with then? I had to work long and hard to find photographers that thought like me and.

I once I did I used to create an annual gathering there were maybe 12 photographers in the country that thought like I did and we used to get together once a year just to have that camaraderie because the rest of our lives were spent you know almost almost keeping that hidden not because we needed to but because it seems so extreme to everybody else in the industry. So you know I think yeah I think hanging out with with.

some people that are close to you and think like you is really important.

For sure. So this brings me to another question, which is how do you up level your ideal client profile? How do you go about doing that? And I think that’s really important for people to think about that because at the very high end of the market, that’s who can afford the services of an interior designer. So why not up level? I guess is my question.

So, and obviously I’m a big fan of working with clients at the highest level. And again, just, you know, in aligned with our conversation, not because that’s where all the money is, but because first of all, I have always looked at serving this clientele as the best route for my own personal development. it’s, I love living in a way that I am kind of, I know you’re like this too. And I love this about you is that you never stop striving to be better.

I love the fact that who I serve is constantly pulling me up, you know, and I don’t see that ending. So yes, I think this is the clientele to work with because of the personal journey. And so I encourage everyone to think about up-leveling. And I also think it’s, I love sharing from the stage stories of brands we know today, like Hermes and, you know, they were an equestrian company, know, Shinola is another,

who now is really well known for beautiful leather products and bicycles and watches. Like they were originally a shoe polish. It’s one of my favorite stories. Like Shinola was originally a shoe polish and then, you know, they decide to up level their brand. So how do you do that? So the first thing I believe is in the title of my first book is lingo is to you have to speak their lingo.

So that’s where the work begins and that’s the work I had to begin with when I mentioned earlier about going to New York City high end brands. When you’re stepping into a world that isn’t innately familiar to you, you have to understand the lingo of the world you’re stepping into. know, what, how do they communicate? What do they see? For example, in the simplest forms, when I was originally a photographer, I had a very generic name to my photography studio. But then as I came to understand what the lingo of this clientele was, they hired

individuals, they hired designers. It was also in the 80s when Ralph Lauren was coming to his own, Vera Wang. So the use of designer names was becoming really huge. So I shifted my whole business to my name, right? So it just became Jeffrey Shaw. And then I created an up-leveled brand around this name, this brand of Jeffrey Shaw, which turned out to be very funny because many years later, when I was kind of at the peak of popularity,

I would meet people at parties and they would say to me, I thought you’d be a lot older. Right? Because I had created this really well established brand image. But they didn’t realize I was 23 when I started. 10 years later, I’m still in my early thirties and they I was a 50 year old guy because not that the brand image was stodgy, but it was so well established. Right. Because I built Jeffrey Shaw’s a brand. So step number one is you have to understand their lingo. What does their world look like? What do you?

Here’s the question to ask yourself is what do they need to see, and feel to choose you? Okay, so put yourself in their shoes. This is the question I would put in my mind when I entered every high-end store. If I’m my ideal customer, what am I seeing, hearing and feeling that’s inspiring me to buy? So I’m looking at the merchandising. I’m noticing how there are no cash registers present because it’s not about the transaction. I’m noticing the smells.

I’m noticing the simplicity, I’m noticing the pricing strategy. So I took all that information in so that I could understand the lingo of the people I was going to serve. Then you can build your brand. And this is where people often do it backwards, right? You first have to understand the lingo. Then you can create the brand, the name as I did, the icons, the logos, the style of your website, the style of how you present yourself, your packaging.

None of those decisions can be made until you understand their lingo. And that’s not just a startup mentality. That is when you choose to up-level, you pause, just pause, understand the lingo better of the people you’re gonna serve, and then observe where do you need to change your branding to up-level to that new clientele that you’ve up-leveled to. Again.

There’s so many stories throughout history of, like I said, Hermes, Shinola, think Louis Vuitton, like there’s so many brands that started out in one form and then the light bulb went off that they wanna go into up level and they did too. And it always starts with understanding who you’re serving and then recreating the brand image and particularly the brand messaging. You have to speak their language.

Great, great ideas. So how do luxury buyers make their decisions?

So like all of us, emotions, but even more so, if you recall from my opening slide of my keynote, Self to the Rich, the opening slide is when money isn’t an issue, everything else is. So everything’s exaggerated. So yes, they’re humans. They’re emotional buyers like everybody else, except they’re tenfold more emotional. And it’s luxury. There’s no need in luxury. Although, it’s in the current moment that we’re living in this

world of uncertainty and chaos, this is something that changes in a very positive way for luxury, that there are segments of luxury that suddenly become a need. know, going to a spa or a weekend away or even that gorgeous outfit you’ve had your eye on in the past was pure luxury, today, it’s got more of a need to it because, my God, I need a break, right? Or,

I need a treat. I need something to keep me going. So it’s an interesting time that we’re living in when things become so uncertain that there are segments of luxury that actually start feeling a little bit more like a need and it’s the ideal time for businesses to tap into that. And I think it fits with interior designers too. Like I’ve said to many interior designers recently that when the world is out of control, the only thing people believe they can control is their home.

So this might be the time more than any other time that people don’t just want to redecorate a room, but actually need to for their sanity, for their soul, their, so tap into those emotions of this isn’t a time just to, it’s a nice to have a nicer bathroom, but that you need that sanctuary to get yourself through the day. So it’s an interesting, so emotions of course, always trust because they are a

very skeptical clientele, rightfully so. They’re also gonna make a decision based on your reputation, which as designers is important, but interesting enough, I think that shifted. You will tend to not get hired on reputation alone anymore, where you probably did in the 80s and 90s. There are a lot of designers I cross paths with that, you

I heard behind the scenes they were absolutely horrible to work with, but they got hired because they were the designer to hire. Not today, right? Your reputation is gonna get your foot in the door, but probably not gonna get you hired unless you also exude the right emotions, a sense of trust. And then last, I’d say this buyer makes the decision, as you said earlier, on energy. How do they feel about you? Because you can have the best reputation in your field, but man, if they’re not getting a good vibe off of you,

If they feel like you’re out of integrity, if they feel off with you, they’re not gonna hire you. Like energy will, how they feel about you energetically will surpass your reputation and something to be very keenly aware of. You can’t rely on reputation alone anymore.

the gut feeling that they get about you is going to either get the job or lose the job.

and they listen to their gut because they live lives that need to be protective or as I said earlier, like it’s part of their job. It’s part of their job and their success to use their gut instinct. So they’re paying very close to how they feel about you in making a buying decision.

So interesting. What’s a common misconception about working with the affluent?

I’d say that people think they’re more formal than they are or that their lives look like what you see in the image because behind it, I love, I literally in 40 years had two, I came across two people that I didn’t enjoy working with. One was a client who I tried making the bed, she just was too difficult so I fired the client if you will. And the other one never became a client because she was so entitled the moment she called me that I just couldn’t deal. I’m like, yeah, I’m just not the photographer for you, her attitude was just.

But two people over 40 years, I think are really good odds. Other than that, I loved my clients. And part of it was because I found them to be so much more real than I expected. know, sure, their lives are formal, their homes are gorgeous, but oh my gosh, most of them can have a rippering sense of humor. You know, downright inappropriate at times, but really fun. Casual, like I loved, they just were so different. And one thing that stood out to me,

particularly amongst the men, because I was dealing mostly with the moms of the house, but the dads got involved. And what surprised me is how much they loved talking about success mindsets and thinking grow rich mentalities. As soon as something woo-woo came up, next thing I know we’re in their office, cramming ideas over success mindset. To me, they were already at such a high level.

I didn’t think they were still thinking that way. But then you realize, what got them there was this way of thinking. So they’re so much more real. And I think that’s really important because I had a role as a photographer that was somewhat unique in that I had to show up professional and, you know, with confidence that they knew that I could handle the situation.

But I also had to crawl under dining room tables to retrieve kids that didn’t want to be photographed and crawl on the grass to get the right angle or on the beach. I’m rolling up my pants to go into the water so I can get the best angle. So to me, it really reflected that experience with them, that there was a balance between formality and realness. And one of the examples I often share with people is just think about how much they love the front row seat at any

and the backstage pass, right? So it’s that duality. Also, Chef’s Table, right? They love the experience of peering into the kitchen. So I think a misconception is that they are more formal, stiffer, less kind, all that. I just found them to be far more real than people expect.

That’s great. What skills are the most useful in attracting this clientele?

I think the soft skills are even more important, because again, I trust that everybody’s coming into it with the skill of what they do, but I think empathy is one of the most underrated soft skills we can have in life, especially serving this clientele. Because especially if you didn’t come from their world, and when I’m brought into luxury brands to work with sales associates, this is usually the number one reason, and brands will reach out to me and.

and express that the number one problem they’re having is their sales associates on the floor who didn’t come from the world of the clients they serve are holding some judgments and assumptions. And if you don’t come from that world, it’s impossible not to. Right now, I think we’re living in a time where there’s more billionaire bashing going on than almost any time in history. But what I always like to say, it’s not the money. Money in and of itself has no power.

It’s what people do with it. many, many people do incredible things with wealth, incredible things. So I think it’s so important to approach this clientele, the luxury clientele with an understanding of your own assumptions and judgments and get rid of them. They don’t have a place because you have to come in completely in clean energy to be empathetic. They live crazy.

I mean, it’s intense. mean, there were, believe me, I had my moments where, like, at one point in my career, was a single dad of three kids, you having been divorced a couple years earlier. One of my clients, like, just couldn’t get around to making a decision because, according to her, her life was just so chaotic, and I’m thinking, you’re a family of four with a staff of 12. Like, how difficult can this be, right? But then you catch yourself and realize, it’s not up for me to judge.

To her, her life is chaotic. And honestly, none of us know what’s going on behind the scenes. So I think empathy is one of those soft skills that is just underappreciated and it’s harder because yes, it can be harder to have empathetic with people whose lives seem like they’re easy, but it’s not. Their lives are complex. Forget about image. think again, another misconception is a lot of people think that they’re

their stresses that they’re caught up in their image. It’s often not, it’s, I’ve found most often their stress was how do I keep this ship afloat in every way, shape or form? How do I keep my kids happy and healthy? How do I not lose all the material goods that we have and have been blessed with? But how do we not lose that? Like I found that to be the number one stress that.

And I was a part of that in a way because as their photographer, I was a big part of their image to their outer world. And actually what I saw that I said it had less to do with image and more to do with how do I keep this ship afloat? And I don’t care what your socioeconomic status is, that’s a fear all of us can relate to. And we should have empathy for that. So I would say empathy is the best skill that we can have.

I love that. Well, you talked earlier about branding and I want to talk about that a little bit more. And I think that people do make decisions by the visuals that they see. So what should the re the branding reflect that would make someone who’s affluent feel comfortable?

I think this gets a little more complicated in the industry of design industry, I think, because as a designer, you have a style and you want to exude your style. And this is where it’s critically important that you attract clients that are your ideal clients. Not that you only design in one style because you probably have a range of flexibility and expanded skill set. mean, as a photographer, felt the same way. However,

The answer to your question is in some way your branding has to, they have to see themselves in your branding. And if it’s not that they’re seeing themselves in the style of the home, they have to see that you’re capable of capturing them, right? They have to have full confidence and understanding even if their desired style is a little different than they would see. They have to see themselves in you.

And I think this is what, again, most businesses do backwards because we tend to want to market what we want to say. We tend to want to push out to the world how we want to look, but it’s not about us. It needs to be about the ideal clients that you want to attract. they should, and I even write down the practicality of a website and something I always point out to my clients is that when people come to your website,

they’re giving you maybe three seconds of their attention. When they land on that website, that opening image has to be relatable to them, right? If they land on it, like you have to know your clientele. If you’re putting out images, if the initial image is far more formal than the lifestyle of the people you’re serving, let’s say you’re in a Montana, Wyoming, lakeside environment, like that’s the vibe.

that people need to see themselves in instantly. And if they don’t see it instantly, they bounce. So they’re not gonna give you a whole lot of time to scroll. I’ll give you an example in another industry that I think really makes this obvious is how often, I work with a lot of people in the financial industry, bookkeepers, financial planners, et cetera. And so often you go to their website, one client in particular reminds me that they worked with small businesses or,

in the industrial small businesses. And you go to their website and the opening image is of a boardroom. Like that is not a relatable image to your customer, right? So we changed the image to being like an image of a clearly a four person and a manager like walking in a factory, right? So the customer can immediately feel and see themselves in the imagery.

which has a lot to do with the initial branding. Of course as photographer, I’m sensitive to that. Next is the instant words, what I call a standout statement. What are the first three to nine words that somebody’s gonna read? It’s different than a slogan and a headline. It’s your statement. What are the first three to nine words that they’re going to read on your website in all your marketing materials that they are gonna say in their head, my gosh, you’re speaking to me, right?

The only way you can come up with that three to nine word sentence is if you truly understand what your ideal client is thinking in their heads and they’re just not verbalizing. You didn’t do the work. So to me, that’s what branding is all about. It’s about them. It’s not about the image and their look and the brand that we wanna put out. It’s what look, brand and image is appealing to the clients that we wanna attract.

I think that’s an important shift for people to understand that because we all have visual cues that we respond to. And I know that we all have that thing. We walk in someplace and we know this is where we want to be. It’s a lovely spot. And as designers, we have to really think about the fact that we have to quit thinking about ourselves so much.

And comfort even becomes more important in uncomfortable times, right? I mean, it’s just that instant feeling of comfort.

Sure. What are these luxury buyers motivated by today?

Well, the important thing to do with that question is today, right? Because today, well, tomorrow’s a different day. Nowadays, I was spoke at an event recently last month and at the request of the organization, I did a different segment in my keynote than I usually do and I got very practical, also interior designers, but I got really practical and gave them seven tips. Like here are the seven tips to think about today. But I don’t hold me to this next month.

because the world is changing so quick. But I say right now, and I literally just this morning released the latest edition of my LinkedIn newsletter, which is called Diamond Edge on this topic. So it’s fresh on my mind, which is assuredness, right? So I’d say right now today, what they’re motivated by is assuredness, consistency, feeling like you’re aligned with their values. Like these are really uncertain times. So they are

Assuring, and I keep saying to be, actually my number one tip when I spoke to this audience of designers was believe that they have money to spend. The worst thing you can do right now is get caught up in this idea that nobody’s spending money. It’s not true, and it has never been true, and it will never be true. There’s always somebody who has money to spend.

which is also another one of those tips I refer to as the silver lining audience. Like there’s always some segment of your current audience or an audience out there that you haven’t tapped into that even in the most challenging times is doing well. There’s always somebody, there’s money flowing somewhere in the world. It doesn’t become stagnant. So sometimes we have to get creative and figure out where that is. But I think it serves no one any good to get stuck in the mindset that, my gosh, nobody’s spending money. I better buckle down and.

you know, cancel all my vacations, right? It doesn’t do your psyche any good. So if you believe, particularly the affluent clientele, they’re far less likely to get frozen. They have a long ways to go before they’re gonna be broke, and they know that. So if you believe fundamentally there’s money to be spent, then you can look at the emotional obstacles. And I think one of the biggest emotional obstacles right now for people, even those that have money to spend are,

is the sense of assuredness that wherever they spend their money is going to be well spent. So the article I wrote this, or I released this morning was actually relating that to the fear of disappointment. Right, so. Sure. And when the emotions are heightened, and it’s not that there’s less money, it’s just that the emotions are heightened in uncertain times. So there becomes an increased fear of disappointment. Like I’m almost afraid to book that trip, because I’m afraid it’s not gonna live up to my expectations, which I need so badly.

Mmm.

dealing with a disappointment is even worse. And I think you can relate that to almost any situation. Like, you know, I really want to redesign the living room and I’ve got them, you yeah, I’ll come up with the money, I’ll spend the money. But if this doesn’t go well, I don’t know that I can take another hit, right? I don’t know if my emotions can take another hit. That’s where people are coming from. So people sometimes get frozen, not from not wanting to spend money, but frozen.

in the fear of disappointment that things aren’t gonna measure up to their lives, become, life just becomes more fragile when our emotions are ramped up. So I think right now today, you can motivate clients by really assuring them that they’re in good hands, by being more consistent than you’ve ever been in your clients’ lives. Like follow up, be a few steps ahead.

because any lapse in consistency is gonna send up a red flag.

The experience has to be one of the biggest things that you’re focusing on as a designer. It’s not about the design as much as it is how they work with you and how they feel about you.

And it’s a long haul when you’re in your work. It’s a long haul.

Is there anything else you would say that they’re thinking about during these current economic and political times, which are very turbulent? Yeah.

I’m seeing a lot more hesitation. I think it’s important to understand that the decision process may be longer than the past, may be longer than you like. They’re pausing more. And again, try to get it out of your head that it is a concern about money. It’s probably more a concern about carefulness, about the fear of disappointment. I just find

And again, when you strip it down, it makes sense. In uncertain times, everything matters more. Right? So the emotions are magnified. So I find everybody’s taking the decision processes longer. When money is flowing and the world is jolly, like people are practically throwing money at you and it flows really quick. So one of the things that happens in an uncertain world and things with so much going on in the…

as well as the world, that you’ll find the buying cycle, decision cycle starts slowing down. And again, it’s not that they’re not going to spend the money, they’re being more careful because everything matters more. So be patient, which isn’t always easy. And it’s certainly not easy as a small business to be patient when you got bills to pay and you got cashflow. And the hardest thing to, I often remind people that it’s harsh to say, but your money issues are not their problem.

And I say it harshly because the worst thing you can do is start coming across impatient, controlling, pushing to people because that again, particularly this clientele, they’re reading the energy. And if they feel that they back up even further. So just be understanding and empathetic with the hesitation and just know that your buying cycle and decision cycle is probably gonna be longer.

Well, that’s good to know. Maybe not like what here. They need to know it. What do think the biggest mistake is that service providers make when approaching these very discerning clientele?

Biggest mistake. I’m not gonna go through your emotional realm and to say that, and actually I refer to it as the diamond edge, which is also the name of my newsletter, diamond is the icon of my business, so I use the term a lot. But it does give you an edge. It gives you an edge up. And what I mean by that is your understanding of why you wanna serve this clientele that’s bigger than the money. Again.

Very intuitive clientele, very perceptive clientele. If they feel like you’re in it for the money, they feel like you’re working with them because you think it’s the easiest way for your, you know, the roads are paved with gold or what have you, that’s what turns them off. So the best thing you can do is get in touch with, to me it’s bigger than your why. You know, people talk about know your why. I think this is even bigger than that.

I mean, the question directly is why this clientele for you? Because they’re not easy, right? You’re not choosing the easiest route by being a designer, by being self-employed, by working with a luxury buyer. You are not choosing the easy route. So why? Why would you, right? And I think it’s really important to get in touch with the real answer to that question for yourself.

Mm-hmm.

Because if you don’t, the reason it’s a mistake not to is that if you don’t, you’re not gonna come across as sincere as you need to. And again, as we were saying earlier, they love sincerity. They love potential in people. And for me, I was very clear when I made the, when it became clear to me that I was meant to serve a luxury clientele, it was just as clear to me in that moment.

my diamond edge, which at 23, I didn’t have kids for many, you know, several or five years later after that, but at 23 years old, I realized inside myself that my diamond edge, my reason for putting up with all the circumstances that would come along with serving this clientele was because I wanted to give my future kids a better start in life than what I had. And I felt that in my bones and in my gut.

Not that my childhood wasn’t horrible, it just was very lower middle class. I was a shy kid. I was frightened by the world. I didn’t know what potential I had and I didn’t grow up in an environment that was showing me any options. I wanted to give my future kids options. And I can look back now and say, okay, I accomplished that goal. All three of my kids had a very different start in life, which they’re aware of and I make sure that they understand that.

my past, where I came from, what I started with. I always joke about like the raw material I started with. You know, their raw material was not so bad. And that was my diamond edge. And that’s, to me, that’s what got me up in the morning. It got me through the difficult client because it wasn’t just putting up with them. wasn’t just dealing with, there was a bigger reason. The bigger reason was I’m willing to do what it takes so that my kids have a different start in life than what I had.

So I think it’s a mistake to not get fully in touch with why this clientele, why are you not, you’re not choosing the easy road. You better be clear as to why otherwise you’re going to get burnt out or you’re just going to be fighting an uphill battle.

Sure. Well, that’s a good point. And we tell our clients to do that. They don’t need to understand their why. Just in running their business, why are they doing that? Because running a business is not easy.

No, it’s not. And that’s a myth, right? That’s, I mean, my second book, as you know, is called The Self-Employed Life. And that’s a myth I unveil, right? Because especially when the book was released in 2021, there so many people choosing self-employment. I was having a blast asking people like, why’d you become self-employed? And they’re like, well, I wanted to control my life and control my destiny and control the hours I worked. And I’m like, great, how’s that going for you?

Right? It’s amazing how many people think, I own my own business. I’m going to have all this control. Like, yeah, right. How’s that going for you? You know, so if you don’t think about your why, like why you’re in business, why you chose to be designer and why this clientele, if you’re not clear on the reasons that’s bigger than the money, it’s going to be stress.

for less money.

So so true. Well, let’s talk about one of the frustrations and one of the frustrations and I know I had this happen for me too when I was a designer is that I would work with really really affluent people and Not all of them would refer me and that was frustrating Yeah, because you if you want more of those people then you want them to refer so why is that? Yeah, I’m getting those referrals

It’s an absolute predictable stage of business, right? You go, you know, in the beginning, like we were saying earlier, people are rallying behind you and supporting you and seeing more in you than you see in yourself. And then you become successful and everybody goes crickets. There’s a few reasons. One is, and I think this is something that you can overcome, which is they don’t think you need the work, right? There’s a way that people start.

When you achieve the success you were striving for, there’s a way that you start coming across as if you don’t need the work. that’s where, just ask. Let your clients know that you still have more capacity and it doesn’t have to be desperation. I use the word capacity a lot, because it could be, you could have create, you could create more capacity in your business because you hired someone or that you incorporated better systems. So you might be able to, you have capacity to do more design work than you did before.

So let your clients know that you have more capacity. It doesn’t come across as desperation. It’s like you’ve changed things in your business or you’re really, I often nowadays also speak to the fact that I’m open to so much more work now than I may have been in the past because I don’t have kids at home. Like I have far less restrictions in my life than I’ve had for many years of my career. So bring it on. Like so I’m actually open to more work.

you had to let people know the energy of that. And it’s not neediness. I think the worst you can do, and I’m sorry if I offend anybody, but that LinkedIn profile frame that you can say, hashtag open for work.

No, need to see that. Take

that off like it’s just horrible because that feels like desperation. letting people know that you have capacity for more work and ask for the referrals, even if you’re driving the Mercedes, because that’s the problem. When you start bearing the symbols of success, people think you don’t need to work anymore. And the other thing I think this relates to designers in particular, it affected me as a photographer, is that in as much as you have a style, you have to let your clients know that

whatever you do for their friends is not going to look like what you did for them. And this was really critical for me because I designed and created my clients holiday cards. And I worked with a clientele that sent out a thousand holiday cards to their closest friends. So we would produce tens of thousands of cards a year. And they were wildly circulating all over not only just the towns that I worked in, but the level of

this clientele is a pretty small world. So you realize that you have clients in connection all over the world. So your cards, my cards were circulating. had to let, I found my clients stop referring me for fear that sort of like no one wants to show up at a gala and another woman’s wearing the same dress. So assure your clients that you have the creative capacity again to.

I

be unique for everybody they might refer you to. In fact, so much so that you’re going to take that into consideration. We were so aware of the cards and the designs that we did for, like if I knew people that knew each other, I would tell them, we need to do something different because so and so did something similar. Right, so whether it’s the wording or the design, like I was literally managing to make sure, metaphorically, nobody showed up at the gala with the same dress.

Hmm.

So I think one of the reasons why people don’t refer you is they’re afraid that you are their trusted resource and it does get to a point where they don’t wanna share you. You can overcome it to a bit and the other part of it is just also just accept it. Also accept your good fortune. I was grateful that people wanted to own me so much they wouldn’t share me. It’s frustrating as a business, but kind of sweet. know, when I went to parties and…

Mm-hmm.

the host, their hostess would grab my arm and drag me around the party. And you they would always introduce me as their photographer. Oh, this is our photographer. You know the holiday cards you get from us? He’s the one that created them. Like dragging me. Anytime somebody called me their photographer, what a blessing and honor that was. That meant they felt, they had a sense of ownership over me. Sometimes they don’t wanna share that. And I also accepted that as just part of the clientele.

I’ll add one other reason they don’t and that is because they don’t want you to make a mistake for their client, for their friends. And even though you did a great job for them, they would never want to refer someone that would embarrass them. maybe it was just a fear and maybe it’s irrational. It doesn’t matter. They have that. And then I did have one client that wanted to take full credit for the job as if he did it.

Yeah. yeah.

So you have about all of these.

I think that’s so, to me the scariest thing in the world is to refer a hairstylist. Like, oh my God, it’s such a risk, right? You might love the way that person does your hair, referring that to somebody else is a real, I’m always really hesitant to recommend a hairstylist, because that’s a big risk. Same idea though, I love that you’re saying that, but here’s something else, what can you do with that? When you receive that referral from somebody, and you’re working with Mrs. Jones now, Mrs. Smith referred you to Mrs. Jones,

When you’re working with Mrs. Jones, please go back to Mrs. Smith and let her know how well it’s going. Right? Yeah. Right? Always go back to the client that referred you and give them the comfort of knowing how well it’s going. Because they did go out on the line for you by referring you. I love that you brought that up.

It’s.

great.

Well, and I love what you’re also saying here in a way at the very beginning of the conversation today, you talked about what I view as patronage because in the old many, many decades ago and hundreds of years ago, people used to support the artists because they wanted to see them be successful. And so that patronage is something that the affluent will do. They love to help people succeed.

And you could become a victim of your own success. That’s what I’m saying. that’s where, you know, and what I mean by that is that just, it’s an expected stage that all that patronage they offered you made you successful. And then they just, forget that they don’t see you in that patronage position anymore. And let’s add to this, and I think this is so critical. Please don’t ever forget those people who built your business in the first place. That’s why I believe

Strongly every business needs to have a practice where there are benefits to being a past client that new clients don’t get. We were saying earlier how, you know, changing customer relationships to customer bonds. This is another, the rest of the world is giving deals to new customers. Don’t be that person. You can’t when you’re serving this clientele.

actually have rewards for being in existing clients. We had things built in. We had benefits and privileges that were not marketed. They weren’t hooks to get clients. But once a client became a client, we said, know, now that you’re in our inner circle, here’s something you can expect. Like, and one of them was a way of scheduling. I had an eight week waiting list for 15 years. So once somebody became a client, we let them know that we would be in, the next time they went to a session,

we’ll be in touch with them 10 to 12 weeks ahead of time. We kept our existing clients ahead of the waiting list, which is why the waiting list got so long, because we always filled it first with the existing clients. So new clients really had to wait. There were very few slots. More than half of my business every year were existing clients, about 70%. So we only had 30 % of the capacity available to new clients. So it was an up-stuy down business model from most businesses.

So it’s just so important, don’t forget those patrons that supported you. Treat them differently and better than even new clients.

Great idea. That’s so good. What are some of the ways we can take the friction from the process of serving our clients? How can we be better at serving?

Please do, first of all, because friction, think, is the number one reason any of us leave anything. And so you’re in particular this clientele, like, if anything’s challenging, they’re out. So how can you make making appointments easier? I look back at my photography career, and it was kind of, it was pre-online schedulers. And again, and this gets tricky because we’re in such a high touch business, In your industry as well as mine, very high touch industry, just.

working with this clientele is extremely high touch. And we think of it as being really personal. But personal is also understanding the lifestyles of the people that you serve. And I used to look, I used to track the time of day that my clients would pay their invoices. And it was often like 2 a.m. And the most active day was Tuesdays. then, so if you start unpacking this psychology, they all have weekend homes.

real

They all have beach houses or lake house. So they’re away for the weekends. They get back Monday’s crazy. Tuesday’s the first time they’re gonna get down to doing any business. By the time they get their kids in bed, get settled down, it’s 2 a.m. and they’re sitting down and paying bills. So if personal, to some personal might mean an in-person transaction, but to the client, personal means that you have the system set up that they can do that at 2 a.m.

Even making appointments, like I would probably leverage, like in my coaching business today, we do everything with their online scheduler. I work with people who want easy control and access to taking care of their own schedule. And I tell all my coaching clients, like, get things booked, but I know who I work with. I work with busy, high achieving people. If you need to cancel last minute, you have the online access to do that, right? Because if there’s a reason they have to cancel or postpone, it’s probably a last minute.

reason that they’re a crisis they’re dealing with, don’t make them take the time to email you and then it takes you two hours to get back to them, give them access. So I think we all have to look at all the places in our businesses, every single touch point and figure out how can we make it more frictionless. And don’t think about the high touch business you’re in just as…

being face to face, sometimes the most high touch thing you can do for somebody is to make their life easy. And people leverage technology nowadays to make their life easy. So scheduling, payments, decisions, that’s what I could, we switched to what we called online viewing galleries of our proofs. We switched that in like 2005, like way before the technology was available, way before.

anybody in the photography industry would think of doing that. And we did it because it was obvious to me, after 9-11, were just work restrictions on people. Everybody was working like twice the job. And that was pre-recession, right? So even in 2005, a couple years later, the recession comes. I just saw the writing on the wall. It was getting harder and harder to get people to come in together.

to make decisions on the portraits they wanted to put on display. So I looked at how can I make it easier? We started putting their galleries online, giving them the time at home, husbands and wives side by side to make the choices. And then I would meet with usually just one of them to make the final choices, but at least the husbands and wives got to make those choices because it was increasingly becoming obvious it was impossible to get husbands and wives together.

And then I also looked at from a values perspective, I was a family photographer. Why am I making moms and dads leave their kids in the evening to come and choose photographs? They should be home talking to their kids into bed. So I felt like it was a misalignment with my values and what I was representing. So frictionless, always, always, always looking for where you can remove friction. Because friction, people bounce faster than anything else, I think, than when something’s hard. Nobody needs more challenges in their lives.

Amen. Well, this is a perfect point for you to share maybe two or three ideas, takeaways that you’d like people to remember about this conversation today.

You know, hopefully there’s been plenty of takeaways, but I’ll summarize. think what I think are really important. One is that please believe that working with this clientele is open to anyone. Like be comfortable. You do belong there. You belong in any room. So don’t let the barrier of where you came from or fear of etiquette or anything else. Don’t let any of that hold you back. It’s open to anybody. Secondly,

And so paramount and important I’d say is again, operating clean energy. You have to be clean within yourself, operating in integrity, being straightforward, knowing your diamond edge, why you’re serving this clientele that’s bigger than the money. Do that inner work so that you, collectively I refer to that as clean energy. Like to me it’s like just clean energy when you are confident that you are in integrity.

Your values are clear, you know what you stand for, you know why this clientele is important to you, why you’re fighting for them. When you have answered all those things within yourself, you show up cleanly and in clean energy and they read that and they’re very attracted to it. And it’s clean energy because there’s nothing in the way, there’s no suspicions, doubts, anything in the way. And last and as we’ve said so many times, be empathetic. Right, I mean, all of our lives are chaotic and stressful.

I assure you money doesn’t reduce worry, it probably increases it. So be empathetic, understand that, you know, we’re all just doing the best we can, especially in uncertain times, we’re all just doing the best we can to get through the day as unscathed as we can. So I think empathy, there’s just, no, there’s no, there should be no limit to how much empathy we need to have in the world these days. So those would be my three takeaways.

Mm-hmm.

beautifully said. Well, thank you so much, Jeffrey. And I want to just tell everybody to check out your TED Talk, The Validation Paradox, and also go to Amazon and purchase this book, Sell to the Rich. Great book. And it has been a delight to see you again. And thank you so much for taking the time today.

My pleasure, always a pleasure to hang out with you.

This week on the Creative Genius Podcast, Gail Doby sits down with global advisor and strategist Kiri-Maree Moore, Founder and CEO of Decision Velocity Global. Kiri-Maree shares her powerful journey from initially resisting the label of “leader” to realizing the responsibility of leading others. She defines her mission: curating spaces where humans have a greater voice and helping leaders align their decisions with long-term success.

Listen in as Kiri-Maree discusses the biggest mistakes leaders make, often by failing to set a strong “GPS” or exhibiting a lack of ownership. She recounts the life-changing lesson she learned from Sir Richard Branson—whom she sees as a mentor—about thinking bigger and understanding the value of surrounding yourself with the right people. Kiri-Maree introduces her concept of Return on Decision—measuring decisions to ensure they are moving the business toward its goals, not away from them.

The conversation dives deep into the difference between management (dictatorship within a broken, static construct) and leadership (mentoring and empowering others to shine their light). Kiri-Maree also explains her fascination with patterns and the crucial need to exercise the muscle of human intelligence to achieve peak performance, accelerate cultural impact, and gain a measurable ROD.

Plus, hear the following discussions:

If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full show notes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s14e4-shownotes

Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors.

Well, welcome to the Creative Genius podcast, Keri Marie. It is so great to have you here. I’ve only known you for 11 years when I met your husband. I met you at a retreat out in California, which was just wonderful. And actually back in the corral again with you all. But I am very excited to talk to you about leadership today.

what a great topic. Let’s get into it. And I’m so excited to be here. So thank you, Gail.

It’s our pleasure. So I think leadership starts, quite frankly, when you are a mom, don’t you think?

think anytime you make a decision and you’ve got people following you, I think that’s where leadership starts. And if you’re a mom, then that’s definitely a place in which it can start. I think for me, I mean, way before I was a mom, I was a leader in leading other people and taking them on a journey.

And when did you start realizing that that’s what you were, a leader?

Here’s the funny thing, and I think this is always funny when we talk about leadership. For a long time I did not want to think about leadership and being my name sort of being put into that pot as well. And the reason being is that I realized I didn’t really like leadership as a thought, as being a leader. What is a leader and what does that need to look like? It didn’t really look like a lot of fun and it definitely didn’t look like lots of good things happening there.

I just served other humans and I just did that and people would go, you’re such a great leader. I can see leadership on your life. And it sort of always was this word that followed with me rather than I went, I see myself as a leader. I just love serving other humans and helping to see that together we bring change. And I think there was never ever a moment that I went, I’m a leader.

There was a moment I walked away from leadership and said I don’t want to be involved in leadership and I had to come back and really own my place in leadership. But I don’t remember ever a moment saying, hey, all of a sudden I’m a leader.

Was there some sort of a shift or something that happened that all of a sudden you said, my gosh, I am just fascinated with this topic.

Yeah, I think what happened was, and you know me in the business world, I have always been fascinated with growth in the business world, but the thing that I saw that was not happening in the business world was leadership within it. I saw people wanting to build businesses, wanting to build companies, organizations, but they were ignoring this big thing called leadership. And I realized that was something that I was very passionate about.

to see that we do way better and more effectively. And it was that that I went, am I gonna take up that mentor and go, yes, I’m gonna walk in and really own in the leadership space, am I seat at the table or am I just gonna complain that I don’t like where leadership is going? And I felt there was a responsibility once I had that moment to go, I’m gonna own this.

I’m gonna really see what it is I don’t like, see what it is I love, and do more of that.

Well, you’re the founder and CEO of Decision Velocity Global, and I’d love to know a little bit more about your mission and your vision of that.

Thank you. I think the interesting part of it was I built originally what it looked like just like everyone else and meaning that it was a nice little business and kind of consulting in that way and realized that there was something else that I was doing but I wasn’t bringing it in my organization. And so I went back to the drawing board and we have evolved a lot in the last little while and I’m so excited at what

we’re bringing out and what that looks like. But really it went back to, like you said, what is the mission? What is the drive behind it? And reality was, I created what I did because I wanted to see how can we help curate spaces in which humans really can have a greater voice. I was one of those kids that grew up that didn’t have a voice. I was in leadership.

or under leadership that used it in the wrong way. I’ve been that person that has not had the seat at the table, pushed away, not looked like everyone else. And I realized that I wanted to curate spaces that everyone has the permission to be at the table. But how can we do that better? And what is that value that we bring? And if I can help people through looking at decisions.

and looking at the way in which we make them and do that more aligned with actually the long-term success of where you want to go, then that’s been a great day and that’s what we do in all that we look at, we work through and we create in Decision Velocity Global.

Great. Well, what are some of the things that you have seen as maybe the biggest mistakes that people make in trying to become a leader?

my gosh, where do we start with that? Right? And I think, you know, it’s funny because it’s like, what is that mission? And I think, you know, with anything, it’s like, if you think about that, you asked me that with the decision velocity global, and there’s so many pieces to what I do and how I do it. literally we could spend hours and hours on what the mission is. And I think that’s the difference between someone that knows

that this is where we are heading. And I always talk about setting your GPS to where you wanna go. And for me, that’s your global platform shift, right? Like what is that that you wanna stand for? What is that that you wanna head towards? What is that that you will get up every day and build whatever that is that you’re doing to be able to create, you know, curate the spaces to serve other humans and do it well.

And I think that is one thing that I don’t see well done in leadership is people setting that GPS. You see, depending what the economic landscape’s doing, it changes, or depending what the next trend is, or, my goodness, now everyone is canceling us, we better not say this, let’s change that. That direction of what people are setting keeps shifting and it gets diluted, it goes into chaos and…

I think that’s one of the biggest issues is that we are not setting it to where we know that’s what, and everyone’s individual to what that is and how you wanna play in that way, but we’re not standing strong on what that is. And then when we are setting it, we’re not in leadership, we’re not standing strong on what that is that you’re willing to stand strong no matter what.

We need leadership to take ownership. And I’m seeing this less and less and less. And I get it. It’s a scary world sometimes. It’s hard. You have to, you know, I don’t know how kosher you are here, but like grow some balls is what I would say. Like you literally have to sometimes get back up and have this resilience that others don’t realize.

it takes to stand strong today in leadership. And honestly, I don’t see a lot of that when, when, when the going gets tough, when it’s, when the challenges are hitting us. And there’s a lot of that. And reality is we have to build our leadership and what we’re willing to stand for in leadership, knowing that we are in this volatile world that can, can rock us.

But what does that mean and how will you still stand and what will you, you know, I hear a lot of people talking about brand right now because people are realizing that you can’t just build around what was, what used to happen and how everyone used to build it out. And people are going, you need to build your brand. No, people, we need to build what it is we’re going for and we need to build what we’re standing for and we need to create.

solutions and why this is so important to help others to come on that journey with us. And I think if that’s the sort of the things that are not working is we’re not taking people on a journey with us. We’re building a lot for ourselves and not taking people with us. And we’re not taking ownership and we’re not, you know, heading towards something and standing strong on it.

And I think what I’m hearing underneath all of that is there’s a lack of authenticity. So people are willing to say what they think others should be hearing about them versus who they really are. So.

Yeah, and I guess just on the back end of that, all I’d say is there’s a safety, right? When we are not willing to stand up for that. And I get it because it does mean that in leadership, I think that we have to build a much stronger resilience. We have to be stronger as individuals and we have to collaborate and come together as a force, much more as a collective and really look at what

what our decisions are making across the globe.

Well, it’s interesting too, and this goes back to a story I remember hearing about you and Taki going to Necker Island and meeting with Sir Richard Branson. And I just really, I think of him as a leader and I think of him as somebody who will stand for what he believes in and that he will do the hard stuff. And I’d love to know about that experience and how that’s impacted you and your vision and maybe some of the ideas you’ve had.

And just two things, one was I’ve been to Necker Island twice, Taki has never been there. But I took Taki as my plus one. I really wanted Taki to meet Richard because for me, Richard has been a mentor both when I’ve been in the room with him, but also from afar because I do see him as a very, very strong leader, a leader who will be willing to stand in leadership.

in different ways and disrupt it in ways that are adding to the human race not taking away from. I, so for me that has been such a powerful thing. So I said, I’d really love you Taki to come along and we went to South Africa together to his, it’s the most beautiful spot in the world there. When I first met, so here’s the funny thing. I always wanted to meet Richard, but not because I thought he was this really amazing human that

was doing all these great things and I could learn from him. I wanted to learn from him in a way that I was like, well, he’s got a great impact. He’s doing amazing things in the world. How does he do all of that? That side of it. And I actually thought from social media side that he was this show off and this, like I had this whole perspective about him that honestly, the moment I met the guy, he is just the most amazing.

amazing human being. And if I ever get a moment to be at the table with Richard, I will always take that up because they’re just the conversations and I have never ever ever met a human that is more engaged in who I am and care about our conversation even when I don’t necessarily say it the best way or have the most intelligent

thing to say at that moment, but he still saw through that. And for me, that was a really powerful moment. The one thing though that I will never forget from Richard that I think is the greatest learning that I ever learned. And that was, I sat there and I said, Richard, you must have every opportunity under the sun to be able to take up a new company, a new idea.

a new concept or go and be a part of something. How do you know which ones to do? Because I was often getting told, Kerry Murray, you’ve to focus on the one thing, you’re doing too many things. And I was like, I hear you. I understand it in theory, but it never really sat with me. And it was this moment that Richard said, and he goes, Kerry Murray.

And I’ll never forget, didn’t flinch, he just said, Keri Marie. He said, I don’t go, what do I need to do? How, what would I need to? He goes, who in my world do I need to do that? Take on that one. Bring on that. Do you know how much that opens up what you can do, Gail? It is amazing. And I realized at that moment, I’m not thinking big enough. I can think way bigger.

I just need to make sure I’ve got the right people that are coming on that journey with me to do that bit, that bit, that bit. And that was life changing for me. And the one other thing that in the moment it meant the world to me. I remember I was walking through the bush and we were going up to where we were having a leadership gathering. And out of the bush, out of nowhere, Richard just jumped out.

He looked me in the eyes and he goes, you. And he punched me on the arm and he goes, you. Punched me again. He goes, are. And he just went.

Unbelievable. And I just went, And here I can tell you, I was not doing what I’m doing now. hadn’t even like any of the things that I was thinking weren’t even a part of my world at that moment. But it was like he saw me even in my what I felt like my worst time. And I was still so confused at where I was going and what I was doing. And I was like,

Okay, I can do this. He’s seen me and he’s amazing and he’s doing awesome things. So I must be okay and I must be, I must have something that I’m bringing. Let’s just get on with this.

Yeah, that’s a crazy story and I love that because he meets so many people and obviously there’s something that he saw or he would not have said that.

I because I can tell you it was literally at one of my messiest times, because I was trying to figure out how, all of a sudden I had this, not all of a sudden, I knew on my heart that I had a much bigger plan for where I wanted to bring impact in my world, but also build out the economic access that I had. And I was only playing at a very little spot, but I couldn’t see how those two things would work. So I was in a lot of chaos.

So when people would ask me what do I do, how do I do that, I was like, mm, you know, I was not very good at communicating at that point.

Interesting. Well, what this is also saying to me is that it’s really critically important for you to have a vision that you can even articulate. But more than that, I think we have an obligation as humans to really show up in whatever way we can and push ourselves beyond what we think we can do. Because it’s not about doing the easy things. It’s really about challenging.

our ability to contribute.

Yeah, exactly. the thing that is to have that during that vision that is beyond you, like I say, your GPS set to something, but it’s also to know what are those drivers? What are those things that are going to take you through the times that are hard or that you’re not going to get lost in amongst ego when it is being successful and is going amazing and you lose focus on building what you think about you rather than about

the bigger picture and I think sometimes in leadership both those things can happen if you’re not careful.

Hmm, no, that’s true. What does return on decision mean to you?

Yeah, this is funny because it’s gone right back to my, so when you’re talking about communicating, think when you’ve got, you play at a big level, so I get to play with global leadership a lot and looking at, you know, leaders of industries and movement leadership. So that when you talk at that level and you’re talking about big concepts, here’s what I know is true.

the things that you’re talking about at that level, we need to talk about it at the everyday level as well. And you remember how I said we need to take people on that journey. I was really good. When I once I figured out what I was doing and how I was doing, was very good at communicating that to leaders of leaders, if you like to say, know, like at UN level, at, you know, private. I mean, one of the things I went to in Necker Island was

closed doors with private, know, leaders of nations, in other words, you know, presidents and things like that. And so I’ve, I felt very comfortable having conversations with that. What I realized was when I wanted to, and this I say wanted to, because it took me a while, by the way, to get to this point. But when I got to that stage where I was willing to go, I can’t just be that secret source.

that works with just leadership behind the doors, I actually have something I want to bring to the wider environment and the wider landscape. And I had to go back to the drawing board and go, what is it that the everyday human can relate to in my world so that you could come in the doorway? And I realized it’s around decisions. It’s return on decisions. That was literally where I started right at the beginning. And that is when we look at our decisions,

And we go, is this adding? Is this taking away from? Is so adding or subtracting? Is this moving us towards? Is this moving us away from? And if we actually had measurable ways in which we looked at the decisions that we made, then we’d make every decision count. And I realized that’s such an important concept and foundational to leadership because I do think

If you are gonna take ownership, you really need to know what decisions you’re taking ownership of and why, and what is the return on that decision? Is it moving, if you think about the GPS, is it moving us towards that GPS? Is it moving us away from? And so I became obsessed with figuring out the patterns around decisions. And there’s a lot of things, if you think about it, if you think of ROI, which is return on investment,

That’s around numbers, it’s around things that we really measure. What do we do? We prioritize when we actually know what we’re investing in. And that’s what I want to do is really get leadership to think about what are the decisions you’re making. if you are prior, you know, if you realize that this is getting the return that you’re wanting, helping to build out what you need to for your community, your people.

Would you do more of that? And if so, would you then prioritize it? And particularly when it comes to, think about the physical, Where we know that when we’re healthy and our body is ticking over and optimized at the highest level, our productivity goes up much higher. Guess what? When our productivity goes up higher, what happens to our bottom line? It goes up higher too, right? What we’re able to do, how we interact with relationships, connect with humans.

build up. So there’s a massive effect on that, but we’re not necessarily tracking that and realizing what that is. And I, I know that if we prioritize things like that as well, and we track that, then we’re going to make sure that when we’re looking after our teams, that we’re making sure our teams are healthy. And that so the cumin capital in which we is an asset in our, in anything that we build out, that we’re looking at that, where, where

making sure we’re treating it right and we’re doing the best to make sure we’re getting the best results from it. So that’s what return on decision is, looking at literally measurable ways in which we are getting returns on our decisions.

And our decisions can be very small too. And it can be as simple as I’m going to scroll on LinkedIn or I’m going to scroll on Instagram versus taking that time to think about how to do something that is going to move the needle in our business. So we get the opportunity throughout the day, 24 hours a day to make decisions. And if we don’t choose the right ones to make, then all of a sudden we’re giving up

to other people.

Correct, and I teach the decision, return on decision pathway. And in that I talk about what I call a drainer, a strainer, and a no-brainer. And the drainer, we get rid of all of those decisions and we don’t do them anymore. A no-brainer, we do more of those, we increase those, we change things into those, we want no-brainers, right?

And then the strainer, like anything, if we go back to the exercise, if we’re doing a muscle, when we don’t work a muscle, it dies, it atrophies, you no longer have the use there. We need to keep working that muscle, and so the strainer is either you’re working it towards a drainer so that you wanna get rid of it, or you’re moving it towards becoming a no-brainer. And I just find that’s a great way in which people have…

containers they can move their decisions through and it’s really helpful.

I love that. You made a statement that everything changes when you start asking better questions and that it opens the doors to ongoing growth. So tell us more about that.

Yeah, I think one of the things that we’ve heard when the world has sort of gone, we’ve got to change who we have at the table, what that table needs to look like, how we have those conversations at the table. I think one of the things that we know and we create these awareness, but we get the same results at those tables. We get the same outcomes, the same things are happening in culture. And in fact, what I’m seeing a lot across leadership right now, instead of narrowing the gap,

between problem and solution, I’m actually seeing it widening right now because those conversations we’re afraid of, like I said, people being canceled, we’re afraid of, you know, we have to, there’s an etiquette of what you say, what you don’t say, how you say this, how you show up. One of the reasons I am, I’m quite disruptive in the way that I look in the way that I, is because I feel very comfortable in the way I look.

And I don’t think we have to look a certain way to fit in. In fact, I think that we have to look the way that we were meant to look and we have to feel comfortable at that table. That doesn’t mean that we agree at the table. It doesn’t mean that we have to look the same at the table. And it doesn’t mean that your, your truths that you bring are going to be the same as my truth at that time. But I do think.

that we have to learn how to agree on something to move that dial forward, to narrow that gap in some way. And the only way we can do that is if we’re asking different questions and more effective questions and deeper ones. I’m many have called me neuro, neurodivergent and, you know, and I have come around to

being more comfortable with that and agreeing with them on many cases on this. But the reason being is, being neuro is that I do not do surface conversations very well. I’m very awkward at surface conversations. You mentioned my husband, Taki. He is great at doing those and that’s why I love it because he can do all of those. And we have this joke that he makes the friends, I keep the friends. And the reason being is that I

I love humans, but I’m, I really don’t know how to add to a conversation if all you’re going to talk about is the weather or very basic surface conversations. And so I learned very, very quickly that if I was going to connect with another human, I needed to learn how to ask a deeper question that we can go to that conversation and connect on and go deeper into that. so questions became my connection point.

to another human to actually have a conversation. Otherwise, you know, for a long time in my life, people thought I was very quiet. People thought I was not very smart. People thought that I didn’t have much to say. And you’re right, I didn’t. On surface conversation, I didn’t have anything to add to talking about another funnel. I mean, I can talk about funnels till you’re coming out of, you know, whatever. I mean, I can literally talk the talk.

because I’ve been in that world, I know it so much, but there’s many others that can do that. So why use that energy to do that? I would rather stay quiet. And when we’ve got the better conversation, I’m open, let’s have it. And you can’t shut me up. So the reason I realized that I had to ask better questions was because if I wanted to connect with humans and I wanted to get the conversation changing, then I needed to be able to do that.

and I’ve become very, very good at it now. But I really think it’s such a skill that many don’t have or are frightened to use because there is often in spaces right times to ask a question or not. And I don’t have a filter in that way, so I’m not afraid to ask a question.

I love that. So how did you figure out how to ask better questions?

Well, I became obsessed with patterns, funny enough. yeah, as the only time that I remember being like curious in science as a young girl was when my teacher said, we have all these brain cells in our head, but we only use a very small amount. And I just pondered on that. And then I put my hand up and I said, sir, does that mean all the rest of your brain cells are dead? And he just laughed and he said, no.

He goes, just means that we’re only accessing a very small amount. And I just became obsessed with that concept. And I went, what if, what if we could access all those other brain cells if something isn’t working? So I thought that I wasn’t working because I was taught I was dumb. I would never amount to anything that, you know, I was different to everyone else. So that meant that I needed to fit into that. So I was like, what if I could access

other brain cells in my head to rewire pathways in me that were broken, right? And, or that were my weaknesses to get different results. And then I just became obsessed with humans going, why are they getting those results? What are they doing? How are they doing that? What is that? What decisions are they making to get that as their results? And I connected the pathways. And so that’s, that’s what

All my work is around, and particularly my fascination with exercising the muscle human intelligence. It’s all around looking at HI, which is human intelligence. And the easy way to say that is my thinking is we as humans are all born with smartness. We don’t all know how to use it, and we don’t all use it.

But I do believe that we can become smarter humans and make smarter decisions which are more effective to the results we want, right? And so that’s where patterns became such a fascination because when you can recognize patterns, you can then connect those with the pathways to the actual results. And most people think in short term, but I’m one of those random humans that think on both sides of her brain.

So I’m very visionary, creative, designer, that sort of side of me. And so I can think very, very big, dream, innovate, and then I’m very analytical, data-driven, strategic. And so I can connect from the everyday going, hey, this is how we do it, and that’s where we go. So that’s fun for me. The more complex the problem, the more fun it is for me, because it’s got all these different variables, and it’s like,

How do we make this all work as an ecosystem? And that to me is a joy. I know it’s not everyone’s joy, but it’s mine.

I get that completely. I’ve got that dual dominant brain too. And so for me, I feel like it makes it harder to really think it through all the way because you have to look at the sides, you have to look at the right brain and the left brain and figure out how to mesh the best decision out of using both of those factors.

So, even in the way that you communicate, right? Like there are people that, so if you’re communicating, I always, and this is why I created the saying in my world, the everyday human was there’s the, there’s the, for me, the global like legacy sort of leadership level that you talk to. And then there’s the everyday human or everyday leader that is going to be different to how we communicate.

what that needs to look like or how much you give to that person versus the one that plays at a much bigger level that can can deal at a much more complex. And it’s not that one’s more smarter than the other. It’s just we have to understand just as if someone looks different, sounds different at your table. We have to understand that it’s it’s you don’t know what you don’t know. But.

how do we get them to know something that might be a little different and then take ownership of that? And that can be different if you’re playing at a bigger level of what that needs to look like versus the everyday human. And I think that is the hardest when you do think from both sides of your brain or think in a really different way is how do you now bring that smartness out to the world that others can share and learn the learnings that you have?

because what you have is amazing, now how do you share that in a bigger, better way? And I think that’s not always been an easy thing. It hasn’t for me, but I see it a lot, especially with those that are pioneers, those that play at a much bigger level.

Yeah, it definitely makes me think about impact and about how important all of this thinking and the questions are to make an impact. And also that you’ve got to have a voice about it. You can’t just have that quiet thought. You need to share it.

I sometimes I think people think you should have that quiet thought. I get told that. go, sometimes I say something and I go, you mean that was when I was meant to have that inside voice, not outside?

Right, I get that. So how do you define the difference between management and leadership?

Yeah, that’s a great question. I do bring it up sometimes in my work because I do see a lot of people that say they’re great leaders or in leadership, but they are managing others. And I think there’s a lot of management at the moment where it’s dictatorship. We’re putting boundaries on people. We’re putting constructs. if you’re alive in this world, you’ll hear those conversations everywhere in leadership right now. it’s where…

We’re working within a broken construct. We’re working within a, know, people are just trying to make me do this and they’re not listening to me and they’re not doing it. The reason being is that that is the old way. Those are the old principles. The old principles in leadership were very much that we do it step by step. We do it by principles. It’s very lateral and linear.

and static, right? Like that’s how we built everything. So if you’re a construct, if you’re within a leadership and a team, we tend to go, these are the systems, these are how we’re doing it, and we manage people. What that misses, and I think this is the difference between leadership and management, is leadership recognizes that there’s times we need to mentor. Just like Richard, I feel like, is a mentor from afar, right? Is that we learn

what are his truths, what he’s found works, why he’s found it working. And we put that into us and going, what do I need to take from that? What do I need to go? That was, that’s great for him. But in what I’m doing, this is how I do that. So we learn from a great leader. And the other side is that we, as leadership, we don’t give.

the static, the old, we give lenses, we give filters. What I mean by that is we should be giving lenses in which you start asking questions. You have different conversations. You tell me, I put you in a position because Gail, I believe that you have the value to add in that position. I’m not there to tell you to babysit you, to manage you. I’m there to help you shine the best way that you can and add your value so you do your work.

really well and I am a believer that you should be having all these lights just shining brighter, right? Like if you can shine that light, if you can make them be able to shine their light so that they can be brighter and we’re shining all these lights, then together we’re gonna be a greater force, right? The problem in management is that we’re putting those lights out. We’re saying, no, I’m the only one that knows how to do this. You need to work with my system, my thing.

I only know what I know, so I’ve created out of what I know is truth at that moment. Sure, it might work, but you’re the one that’s overseeing that. You’re the one in that area. You may see something I don’t. So I need to listen if you think that you want to change that. So I think we have to know what that cost is to why we’re making decisions, and I always believe there’s a value to decisions. In other words,

If you’re coming to me and you want to show me what this is, you’ve got to show me the value of why we need to change this and what it needs to look like. If you’re managing that person, you’re going to say, no, you’ve got to do it my way. That’s the only way. And I have been in that leadership. I continue to see flavors of that through my work, even to this day. And I love leadership where it’s like, okay, I love what you were just saying there.

and what you’re bringing there, if we just do this little tweak with it, I think we can move that towards that. I love that. I’m always saying, don’t just bring me the problem, bring me three opportunities we can change that. And I think that’s the difference between a manager and a leader.

That’s so good. So what does it take to be a great leader?

What does it take? I think that it takes having the right lenses and filters in which you make decisions. And one of the real fundamentals to anyone, right, whether you’re in leadership or not, to be honest, is that I think to think of yourself as building out, whether you’re building out a business, company, an organization, we’re building out ecosystems. We are a part of an ecosystem. We are an ecosystem.

how we flow in that will have either add to it or take away from it. just a really simple way to think about it is that we, as in leadership, we have to look after us as a leader, right? So as an individual, and again, what is that GPS you’re setting? Are you setting something up that you love doing? Is that what you’re really meant to be doing in life? Are you creating something that you’re proud of, that you love?

every day of your life, sowing into, serving others, and building that out and bringing change. And then the other side of it is, knowing what you’re willing to do within that leadership, so that’s you as an individual, then how does that affect the collective, your sphere of influence, your community, your customers, your clients, whatever that is, right? The collective. And then this is the important thing that most people forget.

Sometimes we just get locked in and looking at us as an individual and leadership and I think that’s a problem. And I think then if all we do is look at the collective, what are we building? Are we an influencer? Are we severe of influence? What is that? How are we using our platform? Great. Do it good. Do it well. But I think the third thing is that often gets missed is do you realize that we all make up the global landscape?

So if you think about that, every decision I make, you make, everyone else makes is making up the global landscape. So how does us as an ecosystem, an individual, us as an ecosystem as the collective and us as the ecosystem as the global, how does that all flow? And I think if we actually realize that every decision we make has an impact on the globe, then I think we would look at our decisions a lot more.

and think about how we’re using our platforms a lot more. And I think that that is so important as a leader.

That’s very interesting thought. How do you go about making great decisions?

I think about it, so when I talk about the measurable side of it, when we go back to return on decision, I look at return on decision, there’s four areas I look at, And it’s like, what drives speed? In other words, how fast can you make these decisions? How fast do you wanna make these decisions? Anything to do with that side of it, right? Hence, decision velocity global. I’ve got this saying that success comes when you make the right decisions fast. And…

One, you gotta know what those decisions are. You gotta know how to make those decisions. you, for me, because I wanna play at a big level, I wanna speed dial that up and do it as fast as possible so I can make more decisions, right? So driving, what drives speed? What curates capacity? How much capacity do you have? What does the capacity look like with your team, your company, your business, your leadership, your community, your clients? Like, what is the capacity of your environment?

your people. That is such an important thing to understand and a measure in which I look at when we’re looking at return on decision. And the third one is designs, energy, efficiency and effectiveness. We have to think, and again, this is, I love using the analogy of fitness and health because of my own journey of that. I’ve always been fascinated with health and fitness.

And when I ended up in their wheelchair 16 and a half years ago and still having to work with the glitches in my body now, I mean, I’m very strong and healthy and doing really well, but it’s a continuous journey, right? And one of the things that is really important in, and I think that we have to think about when we’re making decisions is what is our energy? What’s the energy we’re going to put into this decision?

You know, sometimes people go, you should really fight for that. And I’m like, you know what? I don’t want to waste my energy on that decision. If I’d rather lose to this decision right now, then put my because I am way better off and going to get more output by focusing in on that decision over there than being right on this decision. And so I will move away from that. So I think there’s a lot to be said about looking at the energy.

of what that decision’s doing for us, taking from us, creating, you know, that side of it. And the last one, and really important for any leader, you know, anyone in leadership is looking at time. Are we optimizing time? Are we using our time effectively? What does that look like for time? What if I just block this amount of time? Will this move us towards that? That also helps us to make sure that our capacity.

You know, I know there’s this big thing always about, we can’t have balance. I believe there is balance. If we are talking ecosystem and we think about it, if us as an individual, if we’re not physically well, there is something wrong in our ecosystem. If something’s going on in our personal, there’s something that’s going to be annoying us. We are not going to show up the best at business. We are an ecosystem. There are different levels.

in which we need to have that balance out depending what your goals are, where your GPS is set, what that needs to look like for you, your pathways forward, but there is a balance and you need to know what those are and that’s why we need to know what decisions we’re making so that we can have a measurable return on that.

Hmm. So good. Let’s talk a little bit about feedback because as a leader, we have to give feedback and what are some things that we should be doing? What should we not be doing in giving feedback to help people grow?

Yeah, that’s a funny question, feedback, because sometimes feedback comes back. And I know one particular person that when you give feedback, they take it so personally. so I always, so the reason I say this is because I think part of what we’re communicating as we’re moving forward is that things have had, words have had power that people

take on as their insights, as their truths. And so even feedback in that way is an interesting thing. I love feedback. I love being told what I’m not good at. I love getting told what I’m really good at. So I do more of that. I love getting told. For me, it’s not because of me personally, but because when you get feedback, there’s a gap in which if it’s not working,

Now I know what we can work on now I know where I need to find a strategy now I know where I need to get better or find someone else who is better at that to be able to do that and I think feedback is and it’s funny because then I’ve studied music and Of course because like if you know my background, it’s so random There’s so many things probably if you say have you done that I’ve probably say yes but like

One of the things around production and learning sound and the board and the microphones and all that is feedback, right? If you get that feedback wrong, if you jam some cord in the wrong place, that is so noisy. is so… It is not pleasant to the ears. And I think there’s so much given. And we have to be careful how we communicate because…

just because you’re giving it in a loving, caring, really understanding way, while you feel like you are, and I often can feel like this, the person receiving it sees you as a scary person, as someone that’s not like, is in your face. And so they’re not gonna even think about receiving it in a loving, caring way, even though it is given with care.

And I remember this in such a way. remember for, I was a youth speaker for many, many years. And I remember always just being motivational and inspirational and loving and caring. And I thought I was helping people by doing that. Because I thought that way people could receive the love, they could receive the help, they could receive what I was saying. Do you know what? I now even sometimes get told, you’re…

You know, they know me as the global advisor and strategist and lately they’ve been adding brutal global advisor and strategist to it. Now, many would be very insulted by that. I actually find it quite hilarious. But reality was I learned that there are so many people that are going to keep loving you going, hey, it’s OK. You’ve got this. This is great. And nothing ever changes. But I have helped.

as in I know how to get these patterns and pathways and disrupt them to give you some strategies that will actually get you to where you’ve got to choose to whether you want it or not. And I think that’s with feedback. We’ve got to choose whether we want it. But I also know that I am OK being a global advisor and strategist that is very direct. You know, like I am direct, but I care. I care so much. And what I realized was I was getting way more results.

by being the one that actually was helping you by not letting you do your excuses, limitations and buts, right? Like, but, but, but, yeah, we’ve all got them. But, you know, and I realized that I, that’s who I am and that’s what I needed to do and that’s how I need to show up. Now, that doesn’t mean that everyone’s gonna receive the feedback from someone like me in a way that maybe even I’m sending it to you.

and you’ve got to be okay with it. And I think that’s the difference in leadership right now with feedback is that we’ve got to understand how it’s given. We’ve got to understand that everyone is going to receive things differently. And I always say to people, when you make a decision, you’ve just got to know that you’re okay when you go to sleep at night, that you did what you were meant to do. You were who you were meant to be.

and today you made the best decisions and I can go to sleep. I always say I stand before God on judgment day, not humans. And so I am okay, very okay with who I am, what I’m doing and the decisions I’m making. And as long as I can keep knowing that at the end of the day that I’m gonna be able to stand before him on judgment day, then I’m okay, I’m good. And I know not everyone thinks like that and not everyone will make decisions based on that, but that’s how.

I play at such a big level.

Love that. Why is leadership so crucial to business success today?

because the, I don’t know about you, but I think, say the question again, sorry. I got lost with the gates of, if I stand before on judgment day and I was like, have I been, I went down a rabbit hole. Welcome to my brain. I went down a rabbit hole. Have I done what I was meant to do today? Sorry. Yeah, I always ask myself, like I always say to people, I don’t ask you a question.

I’m sorry. Now what now?

that I’m not willing to ask myself. And I’m the hardest critique on myself. And the reason being, because if I know that it works for me, then I’ll bring it out to the world. So that’s why I can stand so strong on what I believe, because I always talk about us as a human experiment. I am the human experiment. And that is how we learn. That’s how we grow. And that’s why I can be so certain about what I’m saying. Sorry. I know you asked me a question.

That’s okay. Let’s go back to it. So why is leadership so crucial to business success today?

Yeah, I think because, and this goes back to what I just said earlier, which was, you know, I think a lot around business is that we are so focused on the numbers, we’re so focused on building, and in many cases, your own empire rather than like a vision that is a collaborative one that is working. You know, it’s not fun for people just to build someone else’s something.

It is fun if you’re building something that together we’re making a solution that is helping and serving many others out there. And I think that is something that is really important in leadership and that as someone in leadership needs to get in their head, think leadership is really important that even in business that when you’re building out businesses, one of the problems with leadership, if we go back to what I said about earlier around individual collective global,

In leadership, if you’re not looking after you as a leader, if you’re not making sure you’re filling your bucket, learning more, think leadership needs to keep learning, keep growing, keep stretching, because you will only take your people to where you’re willing to go yourself. And we always have to be going to other levels to be able to take people with us to.

I also think, you know, we talk about a lot in business ADHD and I think we do have a problem because there’s so much noise, there’s so much stimulation that there is what I call business ADHD. And I don’t even know if it’s a human, maybe we’re changing brains so much that now all humans are getting ADHD and ADD and all that sort of thing as well. But we have so much noise going on, there’s so much going on.

And you as a leader have to learn how to regulate you as a human, but also those that are in your sphere of influence, so your team. And that’s why I’m so, I’m tied on things like capitalization. So what are you doing with your money? How are you using your money? But also your human assets. What are you doing human capital wise?

Are you looking after your people? What does that look like? What is the culture you’re building out? What is happening in their world? You’re going in, you know, you’re giving them a hard time for them not achieving something. But let’s, let’s actually go and have a conversation and see what’s going on at home. Maybe something’s happening that we had no idea about and they’re really struggling just to turn up and they’ve been amazing and showing up. And maybe we need to give them a little more support, you know? I think in leadership, that is one of the things that is so important right now.

And that is why if we don’t look at leadership and those that are in leadership, and it’s funny because I mean, I know it firsthand. I have people in my world that call themselves not leaders, yet they run things. And I’m sorry, but I believe anyone is in leadership if they’ve got anyone following them. If there’s someone following you, you’re a leader, you’re in leadership. And here’s the…

Here’s why I know they don’t take responsibility of being a leader is if I don’t take responsibility of leadership, then I don’t have to take ownership of the decisions I make as a leader. And so that is why I think that in business, leadership has to be looked at, has to be exercised as a muscle. And we need to really look at our decisions being made there.

Excellent. Well, I always like to end these with three takeaways. And you had so many big nuggets today. Let’s see if we can get it down to three.

Which one? can get it down three. I think there’s three major ones and I always talk about it. Remember how I said, and sometimes it’s going back to what I’ve already said anyway, you know, the old approach was linear lateral, the principles, the steps. It was done in a very, you know, the proven model. I believe that one of the number one thing is that we need to have new approaches. We will not see the patterns and leadership change.

if we don’t make different patterns and wire to different pathways. So I do believe that there is a need, a non-negotiable is that we need new approaches to how we do leadership so that we change those patterns. The other one that I feel so strongly about as a non-negotiable is

we need in leadership to know how to exercise the muscle of human intelligence. Again, human intelligence, smarter humans making smarter decisions. If we can build things like human intelligence, HI ecosystems and what we’re doing and how we’re doing that and we learn to exercise that muscle, doing it more and more, by the way, we do that by tracking what our decisions are doing, is this working? Do we do more of this? Do we do less of that?

That is the same thing, right? We’re exercising the muscle. We do need to learn how to exercise the muscle of human intelligence more and we will get more peak performance out of our people, our results at the table, our conversations will change, the way that we’re building out our capitalization and what we’re doing, we’re gonna increase economic access and at the same time, not one or the other, we’re gonna accelerate culture impact at the same time.

And the other side of that is that our truths, I talk about insights, our truths, we are gonna know what our truths are, what we’re standing on, and we’re gonna know how that changes and how we can have certainty with that if we are exercising the muscle human intelligence. So that’s the other one. And the third one, and it just wraps up everything that I’ve been saying, is that we do have to,

really look at as a non-negotiable, a measurable return on our decision. I don’t know, we can’t change patterns if we don’t know what that pattern is. We can’t change numbers if we don’t know what our numbers are. We can’t change conversations if we are not having different conversations and knowing what we’re getting from those conversations. So for me, those are the three things, new approach, knowing how to exercise the muscle of human intelligence and getting a measurable return on decision.

Love it. Thank you so much for your time and it was so kind of you to be on the line today. I know you’re in Sydney, aren’t you? Okay, great. And what time is it there?

I am in Sydney right now, yes.

It’s actually like it’s it’s much later than normal when I’m having overseas conversations. So it’s like nine o’clock now. But I have been sick in bed for the last seven days. So I did I did get out of there to come here. And it’s been such a such a pleasure. And I always love being able to have more conversations. think the only way we’re ever going to change patterns at the table is if we’re willing to sit down, have a conversation.

Ask better questions. Your questions today, I really appreciate. And I don’t just say that, I literally mean it because when you ask great questions, we can have a much deeper conversation. And I hope I’ve been able to add some value to you and those that listen to this.

thank you so much. It’s wonderful.

This week on the Creative Genius Podcast, Gail Doby sits down with Margaret Donaldson, founder of Margaret Donaldson Interiors (MDI), and Courtney Heffron, MDI’s CFO, for an incredibly candid conversation. Margaret shares the story of starting her business 36 years ago and how, after running it “from the gut” for decades, she realized the firm’s growth—especially during COVID—had made the business bigger than her.

Listen in as Margaret opens up about the difficult, but necessary, journey of shifting her mindset from boss to leader. She shares what prompted her to seek coaching—the need for an exit strategy and a desire to ensure MDI’s legacy and protect her employees. Courtney provides expert insight on when a design firm should hire a CFO and the strategic value that high-level financial expertise brings to decision-making.

Margaret and Courtney reveal how embracing a leadership team and committing to a cultural pivot—moving from a control culture to a collaborative culture—required making hard choices, but resulted in massive growth, including a doubling of their net profit. This episode is a must-listen for any firm owner looking to build an A-plus team, invest in intentional growth, and create a “well-oiled machine” that can thrive beyond its founder.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full shownotes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s14e3-shownotes

Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors.

Welcome to the created genius podcast, Margaret and Courtney. It’s always a pleasure to work with you too. And I’m just excited to have you on the podcast today. You are absolutely one of my favorite clients because you are so coachable and is one of the things that has made it such a delight to work with you all and to see you progress over this last year and a half. And it’s hard to believe it’s just been a year and a half, but let’s start with how you got into business. Margaret, what was your goal when you started?

Sure. Well, thank you for having us. It’s quite an honor. I appreciate that. So the goal when I started my business, it just sort of happened. was in design school in college. And then when I got out of college, I worked for an established designer for a few years. And then I formed a partnership with my aunt and she had a successful furniture store.

And after several years there, I felt the need to break free of the restraints of her business model so that my design work could expand. And unfortunately, we kind of had a divorce, which was very hard since it was family. And it was the right thing to do, though. I was a little bit in a box where I was.

And I officially started my business three weeks before my first child was born. And that’s when I started Margaret Donaldson interiors.

Gosh, and you’ve been in business for how long now?

think it’s 36 years, 36 years as Margaret Donaldson interiors. you know, I had I worked for someone else and then with my aunt for several years before that. I don’t want people to know how old I am.

So wow.

They don’t have to know. No problem. Well, it’s so interesting and it’s so interesting also that, and I’m going to go a little bit off of some of the questions I had for you, but I was thinking about for you to come to me at the point of your business that you did, it was really an interesting time to choose to do that because you’ve been running your business for a very, very long time.

Right. But the business really got it got bigger than me and I realized I needed help. So I found Pearl at just the right time.

It’s been great. Well, let’s start with also with how you two started working together and Courtney, share what you do with MDI.

Yeah, so before joining MDI, I worked in public accounting as an auditor for several years, which gave me a good foundation and exposure to a lot of different businesses. And I actually got connected to Margaret through her son’s friend who I used to work with. this was around COVID and I was wanting a career change. And when I heard about the opportunity, I felt like it would be the perfect fit. It was honestly like a dream job for me.

I’ve always loved interior design. even wanted to be a designer when I was younger, but I quickly realized that I don’t have that creative side and my strengths are definitely better suited on the business and financial side. So this role gave me really the best of both worlds where I get to be part of the creative industry that I genuinely love while focusing on the financial and operational side that I’m passionate about.

I was initially hired as the controller and then that developed into the CFO role that I’m currently in. When I first joined MDI, we had a really smaller bookkeeping setup. And so my goal was to modernize and streamline things. During that time, we transitioned from QuickBooks to Studio Designer, moved everything digital, and that has really completely transformed how we manage the business.

And so now today, my role touches on a little bit of everything from strategic planning, decision making, financial management and forecasting to client relations, new business opportunities. And then I also oversee the accounting, course, payroll, employee benefits, taxes, and et cetera. Essentially just helping ensure the business runs smoothly and continues to grow.

She has a really big job.

This is very big job. You’re a big company in our industry. And so for the level of work that you do, and maybe we should throw in here how many people you have on your team. Maybe you check.

You do.

But Courtney and I’ve been sort of back and forth on this, but we have decided that we have including myself. We are at 19 employees, full time employees. And then we have four 1099 contractors that we use in various capacities. So I guess we’re.

Somewhere around 23.

Sometimes it’s clearer than you think, and especially since it grew so organically for you. It’s interesting how all of a sudden you end up running a big team and you never anticipated that you’re going to do that.

Exactly, it just happened and that’s when I knew I needed help.

It was kind of like the perfect storm when COVID happened, business was booming actually for the interior design industry. And that’s around the time that I came on. And I felt like the growth really did happen very organically. And we just, as business was coming in, we made it work, hired more and improved the business as much as we could.

And so it was actually during COVID that brought me to Courtney because we stayed home for six weeks. And then when I called everyone back to the office at that point, my bookkeeper, who had been with me for 22 years, decided that she didn’t want to come back and it was time for her to retire. So that very Friday, I was sitting on my dock with my son.

and his friend, and I was just lamenting the fact that I don’t have a bookkeeper anymore, she’s leaving. And this is when my son’s friend was like, I might know somebody, and he starts texting, and that’s how it all came to be. So things happen for a reason.

They do happen for a reason. I believe that. In fact, every time I’ve wanted to hire somebody, I just think about it and I start talking about it and I put a job description together and the person shows up. It’s so funny that it works that way. So I’m not surprised that worked for you. So I guess a question I have for you, Courtney, is when does it make sense to add somebody with your level of knowledge? Because not all firms hire a CFO.

Yeah.

And of course you’re a larger firm, so to me that makes sense, but is there a particular time or a particular incident?

I think it really depends on a few factors, mainly the size and complexity of the business, especially as your firm grows, you have more projects, more employees, there’s more moving parts. I like the accounting side naturally becomes more involved at that point. And so that’s usually when it makes more sense to bring someone in with higher level financial experience in house. Then once you also start doing more large scale projects, I think it’s crucial to have

strong and efficient processes and procedures in place. And having someone who really understands both the business side and the numbers really helps you streamline operations and then make smarter decisions in the end. And I think eventually too, as you’re starting to think about the future, whether that’s scaling, succession planning, or even your eventual exit strategy, I think it’s incredibly valuable to have someone who can confidently navigate those conversations and

you know, speak the same language as your CPA attorney, financial advisor. So yeah.

Yeah, well, and I think too, it’s really important as you’re growing your firm and you’re in more of a leadership role where you’re the CEO of the business, you’re not really in the day-to-day of the design as much as you used to be. And you need quick information, so dashboards and KPIs and things that allow you to know exactly where you are are really critical for

the owner of the business to have that kind of a shortcut is that you can say, okay, here’s where our cash is. Here’s where the cash flow is. This is how many leads we have right now. Just basic numbers, crunching those and guiding that way so that you’re helping the CEO make a really good decision.

Yeah.

We’re still working through some of that, we are diligently working through it. Sure.

Well, you don’t kind of get all of these things in place all at once and it takes years. As you know, you’ve built this business for years. and as you’re starting to up level and businesses coming in faster, you have to make other changes that get you to a higher level of thinking too. So we’ve talked about where your business is now. We know that you have 19 and you have some other 1099s on staff.

You also mentioned a leadership team, and that usually happens for firms when they’re about eight people or more. At what point did you add people or did you add that leadership team?

I think the leadership team came together, I think, as a result of Pearl. And so I think that would be in 2024, last year. So I had had some business coaching with a consultant who started with me in 2023. And he was really

trying to help me grow the team and look forward to the future. And I think that it all evolved, the leadership sort of evolved from a combination of that coaching and then Pearl’s coaching.

And how does that change things for you, having a leadership team?

It’s been great because with the business, the size that it is, we had to segment into different departments and we didn’t really have that before. So we had to define departments and each department needed a department head. And I considered these were managers and

I was corrected and told they are leaders, not managers. So just little nuances with these words really do make a difference. So we now have a weekly leadership meeting and each leader is able to bring to the table what’s going on in their department. And there’s so much crossover from one to another, particularly the design department and then the

procurement and operations, it’s very interrelated. HR is a department and sometimes there’s crossover there with things that are going on and of course the financials too. So having a place where we can come and talk about what’s going on and collectively, I wouldn’t say that we make a group decision necessarily on things.

but we listen to the input from each department and how what we’re talking about might affect them and then make a decision and move on.

Well, I think it’s important for people to know that you have different ways that you can make decisions. You can get input from people and make your own decision, or it can be a collaborative effort, or there are going to be times that you need to just make the decision as the leader of the company. And that is your prerogative as the owner is to be able to do that. So you have to make that decision about which way you’re going to make the decision. But having a leadership team

I think it’s a big change for a lot of people. And I can imagine that it was hard for you to let go of some of that control. yeah. Adding the leadership team. I know I felt the same way when I started one.

Right. I’ve run my business from my gut my whole career. And when I realized as I was growing that I needed these departments and leadership, it became more business like and rather than just what I thought and what my gut was telling me. And that was a big change for me. And

Some of that change was the way I saw the business. So I saw the business as me. And and so I just use common sense, make a decision. I usually make a pretty quick decision. Maybe not maybe in the past, it was with not as much analysis or input. It was just really a lot of gut. And

I think with the size that we are now and the volume of business we’re doing, that’s really not a smart way to make good business decisions. So yeah, that was a very big change for me.

And change is not easy, is it?

No.

It’s not.

Yeah, I, gosh, I commend you for that because like we were talking about, you brought on this other consultant in 23. So it’s only been the last couple of years. So what really prompted this for you? What was the big thing that was going on that pushed you that direction?

So in 2023, I realized that I needed to start thinking about my exit strategy. had no idea what that would look like at all. And I was thinking, how do you do that when you are the business? I personally was the business. And so when I brought on this consultant, I knew that

MDI had a stellar reputation in the community after 35 years, and I knew I didn’t want to just wind things down and fizzle out and that I wanted to plan and really make a plan for MDI to continue beyond me. But I had no idea how to do that. You know, what would its succession look like? And I felt a really strong responsibility to the team.

the team is who makes your business run. And I just felt it was important that I make a plan that allowed MDI to grow and prosper into the future, with or without me. I could see no version of me just locking the doors one day and saying, it’s been fun, but I’m done and putting all those great people out of work. That just was just not possible.

So because of all that, I knew I needed help. I didn’t have a clue how to begin this process. And I knew that I needed to create a well-willed machine that ran effectively with less of me. And quite honestly, with the growth of the business during COVID, this business got bigger than me. And I was working about 65 hours a week.

And I think that was starting to crack a little bit. So that’s what prompted me to bring in the business consultant.

It’s heaven.

We

He started telling me things that I didn’t want to hear. like you shouldn’t be doing all the design work. And, know, I fought back and I said, I am a designer that is, you know, no, need to be the leader. And I was like, I’m not a leader. I’m, I’m the boss. No, you’re not the boss. You’re, you’re the leader of this company. I was like, well, I don’t want to be the leader of the company. want to do design work. you know, he put up with a lot.

of me in 2023 as each little morsel that he dropped that was a step towards creating a well-oiled machine that was less dependent on me. I did it sort of kicking and screaming and many of the things he was suggesting I just ignored and said, you don’t understand the design business. This isn’t like

the other businesses you’ve helped run, you just don’t get it. It was when I joined Pearl and you started saying the exact same things, almost verbatim, that my eyes were really opened. I thought, well, now here’s Gail and Pearl that is industry-specific.

And they are telling me the same things. So at that point, we just we went full force in. It was like, OK, I’ve had a year of hearing this and now here’s somebody else telling me the same thing. And I was like, I’m all in. I’m drinking from the fire hose and we’re going going strong. So that’s what we started doing.

Yeah.

And I just remember, it’s not often that somebody just jumps in with both feet and says, okay, I’m going to do all these things that this person is telling me to do. it’s really hard, especially if you’ve had a certain way of doing business to change your mind and then take that and implement and trust that is going to work. So you had two of us saying to you and you went and did it.

I just have to say you guys were on it. You were right there from the beginning doing what we suggested and you got good results very quickly as a result of doing that.

I think it’s also important to note too, this other consultant is a friend of Margaret’s. And so I think he could also be very candid with her at times. And I think that’s what really started to shape her mindset. And we started to work on the culture. And I think we honestly weren’t in a place where we could get as much out of the Pearl Collective and hit the ground running, like you mentioned, until we got through that year of really shaping the mindset and the…

is starting to change the culture at least a little bit at that point in time.

Yeah, the mindset piece is number one, because if you don’t change the mindset, you can’t do anything else. running into some issues around culture, and that was what prompted you to do the on-site, which was two days of us working together, one with the leadership team and one with your whole team. But talk a little bit about that, some of the things that you were having to work on.

So it was really the on-site was really about six months after we started with Pearl. And as Courtney said, I feel like because of the other business consultant, I was primed to be ready to hear what you were telling me. You were fortunate you came second in line because otherwise you would have gotten all the pushback and whatnot.

Courtney and I were just absorbing and soaking it in and trying to do as much as we could as fast as we could. But the rest of the team didn’t have the benefit of the coaching and the things that we were learning. So here we come week after week at our weekly meetings and talking about increasing time billing and sending weekly communications to our clients. And it was just one thing after another that

we needed to change and improve and there was a lot of shaking of heads and like what has gotten into you two. And I think that really, we realized that we needed to explain to the team the why behind why we were making the changes. It was for very specific reasons and

They needed to hear that firsthand from someone other than me. I could sit at the weekly meeting and tell them everything that you said, but they needed to hear it from an outsider. So that was really important.

Yeah, and you had to make some big changes. I know that you let some people go. You made some changes to one person’s position. So you had to make some big pivots along the way through. And how are things today?

We are in such a good place today with our culture and the team that we have. I think we really do have an A team in place now. And I’m telling you, that was not fun or easy. You and our consultant told us repeatedly, and I say repeatedly because sometimes it takes me a while to hear things. I have to hear things more than once to for them to soak in. that

you had to have the right people in the right seats doing the right things. And our culture, we defined and spent a lot of time, I think in the onsite really, defining our culture and recognizing that.

You could be a great designer, but you’ve got to be a good culture fit too. That the culture was equally as important to the design work. So I had gone probably 30 years and never in my whole career had let anybody go. And I began to see that there was more

damage being done by keeping someone that wasn’t the right fit for one reason or another. The trickle down, the way it affected other members of the team, it just became evident that I had to kind of put on my big girl pants and do some of these things that I would I find uncomfortable. So, yeah, it’s been a it’s been a journey, but I feel like

You know, it takes practice to do this and recognizing things. And I’ve learned a lot the past two years.

It is a big job to make this kind of a change and it really was a big pivot for your company. And it has also impacted your bottom line too, because you have had a pretty significant increase in profit over the last few years. And I don’t know you have a percentage, that you could share.

Essentially our net profit has really, it’s doubled since we started making these changes. It’s, yeah, it’s been significant. We’re about to close the, you know, the quarter three books now. And I’m looking forward to it because we’re right in line with where we forecasted years ago, or, over our forecast model. And that’s exciting. You finally get to that point.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, well, it’s great because, and to me, this is one of the things that I look for as a consultant. I want to make sure that somebody is getting a return on investment for the money they put into our programs and the work that we do together, because it’s not a small number on the front end. But if you can get a multiple of that, then it’s not really a cost.

Right. So I remember in our VIP session, the one session with you and you had reviewed all our financials and you told us how things could change and how quickly they could change if we would just do, you know, follow the rules and do these things. And I remember, I hope I wasn’t rude, but I

I remember kind of shaking my head and thinking, I’m a skeptic. can’t imagine that what you are predicting could turn into reality. And as usual, you were right.

Well, I hope I would be. We’ve done this a few hundred times, so yeah, we’ve got some experience with it, but in that that’s why I said if you are willing to do the work and if you’ll dive in and do those changes, you will get massive results. But it’s not easy and not everybody is willing to put in the work, nor are they willing to face those hard decisions sometimes. So I give you guys a lot of credit. That’s not easy to do.

I’m

So what were some of the biggest surprises along the way about running a design business?

Well, like I said before, I’d always run my business from my gut and I’ve never had a business class or a management class and I just always did what I thought was right and I used common sense. And once I got to that size where things change, I had to begin to operate more like a big business and I never saw myself that way. I never…

saw myself as a big business. I I would have friends or colleagues say to me, you know, at a party or something, you know, you’ve really got a big business and you’ve got a place in the community. And I just would brush it off. And I just didn’t see it that way.

I mean, I knew Margaret’s name before I started working here. Not just because we had mutual friends like from your sons. mean, Margaret Donaldson’s name was, it’s known around town.

Well, yeah, so I think probably in order to take that next step, I had to emotionally separate myself from the business and talk about MDI as a separate entity rather than talking about Margaret Donaldson as the business. the business had been me for for so long, and I had to get there in my head.

that it was separate. It actually made business development and marketing easier when I separated myself from it because I’m talking about this incredible company that’s doing great things and I’m not bragging on myself and I just couldn’t do that. So that was a big challenge and I would say the other challenge that was really hard for me and

I think I’m over the hurdle now is I had to shift from being a boss and just saying, this is what I think this is what we’re going to do. Let’s just move on. Didn’t explain why I think that’s what a boss does. The boss just takes charge, doesn’t. And I had to shift into being a leader. That is very, very different.

Mm-hmm.

very, very different. And it really changes your way of communicating with everybody because you are not being more of the dictator of this is what’s going to

All right, yeah, which is really easy. was my business consultant. I don’t think you said this. I think it was Sam. He said you have an authoritative style. But I think I’m a nice person.

You are a very nice person. Yeah, you’ve got

Which is funny when you say that because Margaret’s not an intimidating boss by any means, but we really did have, like once we started working with you, we started talking about culture, we realized we really did have a kind of a control culture that now has become more of a collaborative culture. And I think we’re way better off for it.

For sure.

Well, you’ve also had a lot of confidence in the way you’ve run your business, Margaret. And is that something that came naturally to you?

Well, I’ve always been told to have strong opinions. As a matter of fact, when my husband asked my father if he could marry me, his answer to him was that you do know she’s very stubborn, don’t you? I mean, so that goes way back. but I think I like to take in all the information, really consider it and then make a decision.

Hopefully, I’m able to do that without digging my heels in too much. I’m decisive by nature, which has helped in the business. But now, with help, I’m trying to balance that decisiveness with a little more thoughtfulness. Maybe some of the explanation. mean, you’ve told me repeatedly, I know you’ve made this decision.

Thanks.

Don’t act on it yet. You’ve got to bring people along. They’ve got to get to the same place. And that’s very frustrating for me because if I’ve made the decision and I’m still the boss. But what that is, is you’re telling me to be a better leader and get them. Don’t be the boss that just says, here’s what we’re doing, here’s how we’re going, here’s how we’re going to do it. Be a leader and with a little more thought, explain the reasons why.

All of that.

Yeah, it is a new skill set that you developed and you did that quickly too. So then that brings me to that question of have you ever had imposter syndrome, fear of failure, fear of success, any of those things?

I thought about that a bit and I would say no. Unless I’m not understanding the question correctly, no, I just have gone for it.

That’s amazing.

Well, think, you know, naturally, think Margaret’s very determined and intuitive. And, you know, as we’ve said, often leads with her guts. And honestly, I think it’s served her really well over the years. But I think, you know, in many ways, we also balance each other out very well, because I’m the one that’s like, okay, let’s, you know, pause, think about this decision before we make it, the what, the why, the when and how. And I’m very much a thinker and sometimes overanalyze, which I think

For me then, I think I do sometimes have imposter syndrome, which I think is very normal for early in their careers to have. But I think I constantly remind myself that I was hired for a reason, to bring my unique skills and perspective and experience to the team. And whenever those feelings arise, I just focus on trusting my abilities and making those thoughtful decisions and leaning on mentors.

like you, Gail, sometimes for guidance when needed. And I don’t know it all, but I have that experience that is needed and just need to trust in that and have confidence in that. And my goal though is continue learning and improving every day. And with time, that self-doubt just naturally starts to fade, I think. But I’ve also learned, think one of the biggest things I’ve learned with working at MDI is that,

can’t have a fear of failure and you can’t hold you back because especially when you’re growing a business, that growth requires experimentation. And sometimes that means a lot of trial and error. And we’ve had situations where something we tried didn’t work as planned. And then each time we’ve had to regroup and analyze what went wrong and then adjust our approach. And I think every setback has ultimately led to better systems and

greater confidence in those changes we’re making going forward.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I’ve seen that. I’ve seen the change in your leadership style as well over the last year and a half. And you have become much more confident and more decisive. So I’ve seen a lot of that progression with you as well. And every time you become more of that leader, that helps Margaret step up to the level that she needs to be, which is…

And

brought you to some changes in your role, Margaret. So let’s talk about that a little bit.

Okay.

Gee, my role has changed a lot the past several years. So I’ve already talked about the big, big change was going from being a boss to being a leader and the challenges there. I mentioned earlier on, had to pull away from being involved in the design work. And so that was a little bit of a, well, but that’s who I am. I’m a designer and

I was told I had to do that if I was going to lead this team. I’ve had to temporarily step back in as design director for a period of time, but now I’m not in that role anymore. So now I’m solely focused on business development and scaling the business. And when I realized that’s the path I was taking, I

thought to myself, well, what if I don’t enjoy that? What if I don’t like doing that? And I found that I really do enjoy it. It’s a challenge and it’s it’s, I do enjoy it. So, and I think I’m able to enjoy it because I’m talking about the business. I’m not talking about myself, but I think that as an owner and leader of a large team, you have to be ready and willing to pivot.

on a moment’s notice and do whatever is best for the business. So you can have the best laid plans, but you have to, you have to be able to just say, okay, that’s going on hold for a little bit because this has cropped up and has to be dealt with and got to deal with it. So the other thing that I think is really significant for me,

is the amount of coaching I’ve had on changing my mindset on how I view things, how I react to things. I think I’m a little less reactive than I used to be and especially how I say things. I’ve learned the power of words and that slight differences in words really do matter.

And this has been a really hard one for me because my nature is to just blurt out whatever I am thinking. And I’ve learned that by pausing and listening more before speaking and thinking about using more positive words, that’s really helped. And this is something I’m still working on. is, this is a, you’re trying to change something the way you are, the way God made you.

and

You know, I’m someone that blarts things out. trying to work on that is challenging. And I’ll give you a funny example there. So at your direction, have been, leadership’s been trying really hard to document all of our processes. And we have been saying for a long time, we’ve been saying, if you get hit by the bus,

trying.

How would someone know how to do your job? How would someone know what is in your head? So we’ve got to document these processes. So if you get hit by the bus, know, someone else can step in and do that. And so the more positive way to say that is if you win the lottery and you don’t need to come to work tomorrow, someone might need to step in and do your job and needs to know. So that’s just an example of trying to say the same thing, get the same point across.

in a much different way.

I love that. I didn’t know you had used that one, but I liked that. I liked that pivot. That was very well done. Well, what is the secret to business development or your secret to it? Because you’ve stepped into that role and what I’ve noticed, especially since you’ve had some more time to work on that, that it is coming very easily to you.

Thank

Well, I follow every lead. I chase things down. I hear of something that might have potential, first of all, I’m learning to use Asana. I put things in Asana. Now that I have more time, I’m using the dates and giving myself dates so that I will follow up on things.

I always thank people for referrals. Even if it’s something that doesn’t work out, I stop and think who was involved in this and as business development, it’s an opportunity to be in their inbox again, whether it’s an email or whatever. But so I always thank people for their connection in the referrals. And I try really hard to make connections and

I’m starting to think now about personal ways to stay in touch. As a of fact, my thought this morning, I need to get this in a sauna before I lose it, but my thought this morning was to go through our clients, all of our past clients, and some of them are long gone and whatnot, but just scroll through our past clients and make a list.

of those that I should reach back out to maybe with the designer that was there and just say, hey, let’s catch up and go to lunch. Because I know your past satisfied clients are a terrific source for referrals. But it’s just another thought that I need to get that on my agenda and try to do that, get it started.

Yeah, I we’ve started doing projects in other states and expanding geographically really because it started with former clients. Maybe they had a second home on Kiowa that we worked on and then they want to do their primary residence back home in a different state.

There’s a project that we’re installing in another state next month, and I’m not needed to go on that. We did our house here and now we were doing some work in our home and I wasn’t the lead designer on it any longer. I’m not needed to go and I’ve been toying with the idea.

day flight, whether I should surprise her and show up to show my interest and or maybe I tell I’m not sure. But she’s she’s a really great client and I and it has turned into a great friend and I we enjoy each other and she has been a good referral source and a she’s a terrific reference and I think I just made up my mind. think I’m flying.

Anyway, if she’s a great referral source and a great friend, then my gosh, yes.

But that’s the type of marketing and business development that is sort of creative. mean, that is that’s not what you’re going to find in a book somewhere. It is like it’s being focused on the relationships, keeping those relationships, whether it’s with the client or with an architect or with the builder or the realtor. Those are our primary sources of referral. And so

staying in relationship with those people is critically important. And there are lots of ways to do it.

Yeah, absolutely. But I think you definitely want to be on that plane.

Yeah, okay. All right. don’t marching orders.

What are the lessons you’d like to share with the other designers that are listening and wanting to grow their firms? And I’d like to hear that from both of you.

Okay. I would say one of the things I’ve learned is the importance of interviewing and hiring well. I really did a poor job of that in the past. would, I was the only person interviewing, it was usually less than an hour. And if I liked them, I’d say, okay, you’re, you’re hired. We have used the book.

the ideal team player as a guide and it focuses on whether you are humble, hungry and smart. And if you’re not all three of those things, then you might not be the right fit for us. And this framework has served us really, really well. And and again, this is what I said earlier. It’s not just about them being proficient at their job and their skill. I mean, you assume that

They have the skill set. But what is so hard to tell in an interview is whether or not they’re going to be a good culture fit, what their character is like. And so that has that has really been pivotal in getting the right people on the team.

Yeah, I mean, I completely agree. think building that A plus team is everything. And you really want to have people who share your core values, believe in your vision and are actually genuinely excited to grow with the business. Because not everyone may be on board and that’s okay, but they just might not be the right fit for this business, you know, maybe. And so I think growth really takes a lot of trust.

and you have to communicate well, delegate, and empower your team to take ownership, especially when you’re making a lot of changes. And again, yeah, and growing the business. But I also think it’s important to grow with intention and have a plan, create efficient processes, and keep refining them until the business runs like a well-oiled machine. I think that structure gives you lot of freedom to focus on.

Mm.

know, strategy and creativity instead of just putting out fires all the time, which is what we had been doing for many years. And it’s exhausting.

And you know what, that is a really good point because if you’re putting out fires, you have not, you’ve got some serious core problems that you need to fix. And that is one of the, probably the biggest tips that you could be paying attention to if you’re listening to this. If that’s what you’re doing all the time, then you’ve got some things that you need to fix.

That’s right. That’s right. Another thing I would say that’s important is to anticipate your hiring needs before you need them to think ahead like that. I never thought like that. It was like, OK, if I have a void, then I’ve got to find someone. And so I’ve been advised to always be thinking about the future and be prepared, you whether you you.

bring in a lot new work, are you prepared to handle it or you never know when somebody’s going to have a life change and need to suddenly leave your team. so keeping your eyes and ears open for all the different jobs is good to be doing. And then I would also say if you’re wanting to grow your firm,

you’ve got to invest the time in the business development. And that was something I never did before. I’ve been very fortunate over my career that I always had enough work. It just came in naturally, probably because I was doing all that follow-up and thanking people and staying connected. But I didn’t really see that as business development. I thought that was just being polite.

Little did I know, it’s all about the easy stuff, which is relationship.

Right, right. But now I see it to see that that is why I didn’t have a problem. And now that I’m trying to scale the business, I have to be more intentional about it and take it further and not just be responding to what comes in. I need to be a little more proactive about it.

for sure. I always like to end these with a question that is, somebody some ideas that they can go put into place. So what are a couple of takeaways that you’d each like to share?

Go ahead, Margaret.

Okay, well, I, I would say listen to your gut just because that has served me well. I think your, your gut instinct on things is worth paying attention to. It’s usually right. And whether it’s about a client, maybe not being the right client or a hire or a business decision. I think another thing.

And this is something my husband helped me with is if you have the right business, a good client knocking on your door and you’re thinking, I can’t take this on because I just don’t have the capacity. He’s always told me just hire someone and don’t if it’s the right type of business. Do it. Just figure out.

say yes and figure out how you’re going to do it and do it as well as you always have so that you keep your reputation. That’s been good advice because I can remember many times thinking we’re so busy I don’t want it. You he’d say just hire somebody and I know I know. So and then I think as a designer and I think

him.

Many of your listeners are designers like me that just ended up as the CEO running their business. That’s pretty natural here. Invest in good business people and coaching. Always try to surround yourself with people that do things better than you do. like financial, I’m not that great at that.

I feel like I have a good business sense, but the weeds of the accounting is definitely over my head. you know, it’s important that I have someone that is way smarter than I am in that area. consider what you are good at and surround yourself with people to do things that you’re not good at or.

I’ve also decided I don’t want to do that anymore. Maybe I don’t run an installation anymore, haven’t for a number of years. It’s exhausting. And I have got someone who does that exceptionally well. it happens. So figuring all that sort of stuff out, I would say.

Terrific. And Courtney, about you?

would say build the right team and trust them. Surround yourself with people that you share your values, like I said, believe in your vision and are willing to grow the business. And once you have that A plus team, communication and trust are key and giving people the ownership and space to do what they do best. Like Margaret was saying, I also think grow with intention.

And as your firm expands, put strong systems, processes, and financial structures in place so that the business runs smoothly behind the scenes. And that foundation then, you know, because of course it allows you to focus on that, the strategy, creativity, and delivering exceptional service to your clients and all the other players involved in the project. And then I would say value relationships and service above all.

I think there’s a lot to be said for genuine relationships. And I think that’s what’s gotten Margaret so far in this business, in this industry. whether it’s its clients, vendors, builders, or even your own team, they’re really the core of a successful design business, those relationships. And I think when you operate with integrity, transparency, and that genuine desire to provide the highest level of service, then

that success in referrals just naturally follow.

So well said. You all thank you so much for being on the podcast today. And I know there were so many great nuggets in this. can’t wait for people to hear this.

Well, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Running a thriving design firm is often described as one of the hardest jobs out there. If that’s true, how does a successful designer not only manage the chaos but scale a business to attract the top one percent of clients and win industry awards?

This week on the Creative Genius Podcast, Gail Doby welcomes Stephanie Kraus, founder of Stephanie Kraus Designs, to share her remarkable story of transforming from a national magazine publisher to the head of an award-winning interior design firm. Stephanie reveals how she leveraged her original career’s organizational expertise to build a design business with consistent waitlists, making it one of the hardest—yet most rewarding—jobs she’s ever undertaken.

Listen in as Stephanie discusses the evolution of her firm, which shifted its focus to handling full home gut renovations and custom homes while navigating the unpredictable challenges of the industry. She defines what it means to be a “fierce” but caring businesswoman, and explains how her philosophy of being a fast action taker ensures her employees feel protected and the business runs smoothly enough to scale.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full shownotes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s14e2-shownotes

Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors.

Well, welcome to the Creative Genius podcast, Stephanie. First, I’d love to start with your personal story. How did you get into design?

Well, thank you, Gail. It’s great to be here. Great to see you again and hear your voice. Okay, I started my business about 13 years ago. And prior to that, I was a publisher for a magazine and in the medical field. So absolutely nothing to do with design at the time, but I’ve always loved design, fashion, style. I think it’s just in my DNA.

So back in 2013, I don’t know if you remember this, but design blogs were the thing. And I devoured them while I was at home with my kids when my children were little. Because when I had my first child, I actually had to stop working as a publisher. Because when you’re a publisher for a magazine that’s national, you need to travel. So I had to take a break from that.

because both myself and my husband were traveling nonstop and something had to give. So it’s sad to give up that part of my career, but it actually opened the door to another part of my life and a new career. When the kids were little, I did always know I wanted to go back to work and wanted to run my own business. publishing, believe it or not, was like running your own

many company so i learned a lot about leadership and operations and i did want to open something for myself i felt like i definitely had that entrepreneurial bug and i combined that with my love and passion for design and i started my own company stephanie cross designs into the thousand thirteen specifically focusing on you know small projects and residential design

And how I started was I started decorating my own home and started writing my own design blog, obviously with publishing as a background. I really liked to write and I thought I was pretty talented in that area. So I wrote my design blog, did my own house, and then things just took off. My first clients were friends and family, and then word of mouth spread and I haven’t stopped since.

Busy and have had wait lists since the day we opened.

That is amazing. So what was your original vision for the business?

In the beginning, before I had any grand plans, I just wanted to run an organized company that had processes and procedures in place, just as when I was a publisher, we had a very organized process. And what I wanted to bring into it was more of the creative side and a creative aspect that helps people live beautifully and comfortably.

I never imagined it would grow into what it is now, but I feel like doing consistently good work, caring deeply for my clients, being an ambassador for them, and actually a translator for them among the team that they work with when they’re building a house and designing a house for acting as a translator between the builders and architects and trades so that the client’s vision

can be translated into their dream home with the whole team behind them.

And has your vision changed? 12 years is not a terribly long period of time, but I have a feeling things have changed because obviously you got into this business coming from the publishing world and then you start this and it’s been very successful. So what has changed over time?

When I first started the projects were a little smaller. Sometimes it was just furniture and other times it was a small gut renovation or you know kitchen renovation, bath renovation and the vision of the company now is we are focused mainly on full home, full home gut renovations and our whole focus

is our clients working with clients who are family centered to create custom homes from concept to completion. And we feel like we’re really lucky to collaborate with incredibly talented architects and builders who help us translate each client’s dream into reality. Again, my vision for the company today is really concept to completion, helping a client.

reach their dream home through not only beautiful aesthetics, but how they circulate and work through their home and flow through their home now and many years from now. We always like to take into consideration what stage they’re in in life. No small kids. How does that translate from small children to teenage years, to college years, to when they have grandkids and

also encompass all of the family events that take place in these homes and create a beautiful backdrop for our clients.

That’s great. Well, what are some of the biggest surprises along the way in running a design business? Because it’s totally different than publishing, I would think.

designing, running an interior design firm and being an interior designer is probably the hardest job I’ve ever had. I think it’s the most detailed job and there are so many things that are out of our control. So I’ve worked in the publishing and the medical field and this is by far the hardest. The only thing we do control is our creativity and how we show up.

So it took years to build a reliable team of vendors and trades, but once you have them, it’s gold. But it’s really hard not controlling the timing of the furniture, the damages that come with the furniture, the kitchen cabinetry that we designed, but we didn’t create, we didn’t fabricate. All of the things that encompass an interior design project that we rely on

other people to fabricate, make, install to give the final product. And not having control over every aspect of that is very difficult. But what I’ve learned over the years is it’s really important to work with trusted architects, trusted trades, and trusted builders. So we’ve been really lucky.

That’s great. Well, and I would describe you as a fierce businesswoman. Have you always been that way?

I think so. Once I’m comfortable in a role or in a space, yes, I think I just like to set a goal and meet it. And you can’t know everything. So if I’m uncomfortable in a role, if I don’t know anything, I just lean in, keep learning, stay transparent with our clients and just do my best.

Fierce doesn’t mean loud. It just means consistent, fair, decisive, and caring.

I think that’s a great definition for fears and I think fierce is a good thing to go for. So and it’s a great model that you have. One of the things I noticed when we were at boardroom retreat just a few weeks ago, I watched you do something really interesting and it tells me a little bit about your work style. We had everybody take an assessment for their business and it was pretty long. And during this time you were.

you were answering the questions, but you were also executing actions. And you told me about this later. And I thought, wow, that’s really fascinating. Because who would have thought that somebody would just immediately say, OK, well, I need to get into action on this and start executing in the middle of doing an assessment. So that is talking about fast action taking. Is that how you work normally?

Yes, and I think that’s instinctive for me. I think that just comes naturally. I’ve always taken action. Trust me, I do procrastinate with things like unpacking my suitcase and doing laundry. But for achieving a goal, making sure that my company, my team, my employees are taken care of, that I just do my best to try to take action.

And in particular, I think what we were working on was insurance, you know, is my insurance up to date? Is my contract in place? Because those are the kinds of things that not only are really important to running a successful business, but also keep your employees feeling safe, make them feeling comfortable. I want them to feel when they come into their office every day that I’m protecting them, making sure that they have a job in

you know, for many years to come, if you don’t feel safe, if you don’t feel comfortable, then, you know, how can you do your job effectively? Kind of interesting. I didn’t even realize I was doing it. But if something needs doing, I just do it, handle it. Yeah. And I think that’s what I was doing was I was emailing my insurance agent mid meeting just to review our policy. And I actually had added cyber insurance, which I didn’t have before.

So to make sure that my client’s money when it’s, I guess, given by wire transfer or by credit card that it’s Same with updating our contracts. I review it every few years because our business keeps evolving and keeps growing with seven full-time employees and two contract employees. Again, I want everybody to feel protected and supported. And I want them to know that they have a leader at their company who’s going to take action.

And make sure the business is running as smoothly as possible because if you don’t have a smoothly running business, you can’t be successful.

I have a feeling that this confidence that you have in this way of operating came naturally to you. Is that true?

think so. But I’m going to be honest, I wasn’t probably always this confident. If I started this business 20, 25 years ago, I don’t think I would be as confident or as self-assured as I am today. I think time, experience, being honest with yourself, knowing that it’s okay to not know everything. So you have to show a little bit of vulnerability.

Being honest and also i’ve been really lucky over the past before i started before i had my children working for really incredible people who mentored me along the way who taught me leadership who taught me how to run a business successfully in fact it was kind of funny a few months back. One of my past bosses she was a group publisher i was a publisher for the magazine.

sent me a DM through Instagram and said, my gosh, Stephanie, I can’t believe that you are working with Mark Asher, one of the architects that we work with. He built my house 20 years ago when we redesigned it. So was so glad she had reached out to me because then I had a chance to thank her. said, Pat, if it weren’t for you and how you mentored me along the way when I was in my 20s and 30s, I don’t think I would be as successful as I am now.

So I just wanted to thank her for that because I learned so much from her that her confidence gave me confidence. And one of the things she said was, I knew you would be a super successful person. I love all of your designs. You were a really hard worker. She’s like, I’m not surprised. Keep going. Tell Mark I said hi and we love what you do.

That is so great. Well, and so with this confidence, I also have to ask this question because sometimes I’m surprised at the answer. And have you ever had imposter syndrome or fear of failure, fear of success, any of those things?

I don’t think I have. Again, I started this company 13 years ago. So I was in my, I was in my forties. So I have a strong sense of, you know, who I am, a strong point of view. And I love helping clients and other people find their point of view. And I feel like I’m really good at getting to know people and getting to know their needs. And

helping them feel comfortable sharing what they want with me as a designer because they trust me. So I think that if you have the trust of the client and you have your own point of view and you can stand in your space, I don’t think you need to worry about, you know, are you good enough? Are you like better than other designers? It’s really about putting out consistently good work or work that you feel is good.

and trusting yourself.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you build a great firm and in fact, you won an award at our boardroom retreat for some of your amazing results. So what would you like to share with other designers that are wanting to grow their firm and have the level of confidence you have?

You can’t scale and you can’t grow your business without hiring good people. So that’s my number one piece of advice. As soon as you’re ready, hire. Your people are everything. Hire the best person you can afford and ideally someone who’s smarter than you. You don’t need another you. You need somebody who can compliment you and don’t micromanage your people. Teach them, listen and bring your team along to learn, to experience,

Bring them to high point, introduce them to new styles, let them take risks you learn from them. Keep the work environment fresh and exciting. People are your most important asset. You need to hire really good people in order to scale. You cannot do this yourself. There’s absolutely no way you’re gonna be able to design a 5,000 square foot house without the help of your team.

Yeah, that’s a big job.

have all of your processes and procedures in place. We all know that every single project is completely different than the project before and the project that you’re going to be doing next year. But every project should be run the same exact way. You should have the same process, the same procedure. This will give you confidence. Having confidence in your process and how you work and creating steps in order to

produce the most successful end result for your client, even though it doesn’t seem as a creative, you should be as organized and have process and procedures. I think that’s also really important. Everything needs to be organized. Everything needs to flow consistently in order for your firm to be successful.

I totally agree with you. This is really interesting. We have questions about this all the time. Some designers work from home and some people feel really bad that they work from home. They feel like it hurts their business. But you’re running a larger firm in the world of design. And has that had any impact at all on your ability to attract and serve these top level clients?

No, it hasn’t affected attracting top clients. We have a studio in my home in the basement that’s about 1500 square feet. So we have plenty of room, although we sort of growing out of it now, obviously. So it hasn’t affected attracting high level clients, but it’s definitely helped attract top talent because working remotely,

will give you an opportunity to hire the best person, give them a very flexible environment, gives them automatic trust and independence to do their work efficiently and effectively in an environment where they feel most comfortable. So we’re in the office two days a week, but then three days a week they can work from home and that’s where they can focus and get a lot of work done versus being in the office where we’re all sort of like chit chatting and

you know, getting distracted really easily. But we definitely also feel that we do need two days in a row in the office because unlike other firms, even though we’re divided up into a couple of different teams that work on different projects, we all collaborate on every single project. So even though you might not meet all of our lead designers or support designers, every single one of them has contributed.

to your home and to your project, because what we wanna do is use all of these creative, talented minds to produce the best possible solution to a problem or to produce the most creative, interesting, beautiful space. And five or six minds are so much better than one or two minds. So the two days in the office are used to collaborate, to help, to assist anybody with struggle.

And then the three days are at home are really used specifically to do all the technical drawings, do all the proposals, focus in on work that needs to be, I guess, where you need to focus the most, right? Use the most brain power in a silent, calming environment.

What’s your secret for attracting the top 1 % clients?

I think, well, most of our work becomes, comes from referrals. So it’s not unusual for me to have three or four projects from one family. So we’ll start out doing their primary house and then we’ll do their beach house. And they typically at the beach, we’ll have an overflow house for their guests and their family members. And we’ll design that house.

And then they’ll have a house in Florida and we’ll design that house. So it’s easy to attract high level clients when they have multiple homes and we do such good work for them. They never want to leave us. And after we do one house, they say to themselves, wow, I kind of want my home in Pennsylvania to look like this. while we’re at it, let’s work on my Florida house. Right now we have

four projects at the same time for one client. And I had already done two projects of theirs. We did their house in Ocean City. We did their house in Ponte Vedra. They’re buying a house in Bethesda and we’re doing that house and they have a house in Bakers Bay that they’re building. So we’re working on all of those, obviously not all at the same time because they’re all different timeframes, but we have contracts signed for those.

They also then tend to refer us out to their family and friends. And then we also have an incredibly large presence on Instagram. And I’ve gotten a lot of business through there. Even though I don’t really use Instagram to gain business, I actually use Instagram so that when clients are looking at our work, they see the type of work we do and know that we do beautiful spaces.

And it just sort of builds a trust factor for them. Typically they’ll say, Stephanie, I’ve been following you for 10 years and I finally get to build my dream house and we want you to be the designer. Or they’ll say, you know, I picked you because I love every single thing you post. It might not be my style, but I love what you do.

That’s great. Well, that is good information for the people that are listening because I think sometimes we forget how important it is. Certainly referrals are one of the best ways to get business, but being in an area that you’re in, of course, a lot of the people are they have second, third, fourth homes. It makes a lot of sense. It helps if you’re in a resort area or an area where the people that have that kind of

money are able to do projects. that’s a it’s a big plus for you.

And actually, I don’t want to leave out two other really important referring sources, and that’s our architects and our builders. So our big referring architects and builders, we bend over backwards to make sure that we take care of them and their clients if we’re a good fit for them.

Great idea. Well, I’m curious if AI has impacted your business yet or if you see that impacting your business in the future.

see it impacting our business in a positive way. We’re super excited for how AI has helped us improve our renderings, improve our mood boards, improve our furniture presentations, improve our visuals that we present to the client. Anything that helps our clients better visualize their home is a win in my mind. And my team has done a great job of really taking that on and absorbing that and learning

for themselves how to use it most efficiently. So I’m excited to see how it keeps improving our presentations and our processes. We also use it for the back ends. We obviously use it for emails and communication. In fact, one of the things that, one of the most important things that I also do with my firm is continually educate our team. As I mentioned, we take the team to High Point a couple of times a year. We go to New York City, we do sourcing trips.

but we’re also having an AI expert in the design area come to our office in the next month so that they can teach us the latest and the greatest on how to use AI to help our clients visualize what their house is going to look like.

That’s great. Are there a couple of tools in particular that you’d like to share with our listeners?

Well, the designers are probably better at that, but we use ChatTPT, obviously. That’s probably the easiest one. One of our designers is in Chief Architect, and she’s been using something, I’m really probably not the person to ask this question to, because they’re the ones that do all the technical aspects. do the creative concepts, and they do all the technical side. So I’m not sure what she’s been doing, but

They’ll use mid journey. I myself have used mid journey to create and visualize a vision that I’m I see in my head, but I can’t find anywhere. And I’m able to type into mid journey, create a space that looks like this has this. And it’s been pretty good at giving me a fair representation of what it is I’m looking for. So

That helps provide something that’s unique that you can’t find on Pinterest, that’s really in my own brain, that mid-journey’s helping me to translate.

Love that. What else is inspiring you today? What or who?

So I get really inspired by traveling. We take several large trips throughout the year. always traveling to Europe. We lived in Europe and we go back once a summer with the family. always find broadening your horizons, seeing how other people live, function, design is always inspiring to me.

seeing different styles, seeing different aesthetics, breaking out of the box that we see on Pinterest or the box that we see here in the States and your neighbor’s homes and your neighbor’s neighbor’s homes. So traveling is always one thing that inspires me. My clients also inspire me. Seeing their joy when their home comes together is truly addictive.

Learning about how different people live and our different clients live, how they function in their houses, what they find beautiful. I find that really inspiring.

Great. Well, I’d love for us to wrap up with three takeaways that you’d like to share with our listeners and maybe some things that they can take and apply from what you shared today.

First, I would say hire well and trust your team. You can’t do it all. I think that’s the most important thing. Hire as soon as you can. You will need help. The more help you have, the more you can stand in your space and do what you love to do. For me, it’s being creative. For me, it’s having a vision when I walk into somebody’s house or look at an architectural drawings.

and see, okay, what do I see in this space? Knowing these clients, knowing their family, knowing that there’s gonna be multiple generations living in here if it’s a vacation home for the next 20, 30 years. So having a team to support me, having a team that is an expert in technical drawings, elevations, all the important information that really needs to be provided to architects and to builders in order to make that dream come true.

I think that’s really important. And don’t micromanage your people. Let them explore their creativity. Let them learn, learn from them. Even though you may have more experience, everybody can teach you something. Know that you’re not perfect and that you’re always going to be learning something new on the job. Curious, learn from everyone, vendors, clients. Learn from your mistakes. Learn from tile installers.

I love that.

I’m learning new technology every single day. The other day somebody was explaining to me the technology that they want to use in this grout on the tile. And I had to say, excuse me, can you please repeat that and explain to me what that means? I’m constantly asking those questions. Be vulnerable because there’s no way you can know everything in this job. Like I said, it’s the hardest job I’ve ever had. I will never be all knowing in this job.

And there’s so many different aspects of it, that so many different lanes that that’s why we have tile installers, framers, flooring people, let them be your experts and let them teach you. Yeah, and be kind to be consistent. This industry is small. Your reputation is everything. You may not be able to please every client and that’s okay, you know.

I totally agree with that.

Do the best you can, learn from your mistakes, learn from your failures, everybody has them. As long as you stay positive, be kind to everybody on the job. And one of the most important things I tell my team is everybody’s your client, not just our clients, but our builders, our architects, our framers, our suppliers, our vendors, our delivery team, our receiving house.

Everyone is a client because without the help of your team, your vendors, you will not have a successful project.

Yeah, I totally agree. One of the things I used to say to my employees is, your vendors, all the people that you work with, that is absolutely pure gold. Those relationships are critical. And if anybody messes up a relationship, they will be fired. And I did actually have to fire somebody one time. it was not one of my happier days. you have to protect your business and protect the resources that you have.

One of the things we’ve also adopted is hold meetings every six months with our receiving house, just to touch base with them because we do so much product that, you know, what, what, and the, and the world is constantly changing with tariffs. the shipping damages, as any designer would know is, just been awful. And then just been incredible, been incredible headache for all of us. We’re always trying to improve when the product.

comes into the warehouse, how can we make it most efficient for our delivery team to organize it, damage check it, tag it, keep it safe, have it ready for install day, make it the most effective, you know, because we’re having like things like light bulbs shipped, hundreds and hundreds of product for one project. How can we make, how can we help you help us?

So those are the types of things we sort of try to think out of the box on how to, know, we can’t blame the receiver for all of the mistakes. There’s so many hands.

that touch your product, how can we make it more efficient for them? Because they’re the ones that are the final end game. And they’re the ones that are getting that delivered to our homes.

Absolutely. Well, Stephanie, this has been great. Thank you so much for sharing your story and for sharing those ideas at the end. think those are valuable and helpful for everybody. So thank you again for your generosity.

and scale this was fun.

This week on the Creative Genius Podcast, Gail Doby sits down with design power couple Dwayne Bergmann and Kyle Barrett to share their incredible, serendipitous love story, their unconventional paths to success in the design industry, and how they’ve partnered to build multiple successful businesses and a unique product line.

Dwayne, the founder of Dwayne Bergmann Interiors, and Kyle, who previously ran his own successful design firm and is a licensed realtor, discuss the unexpected way they met in New Orleans, their diverse backgrounds—from decorating cakes and selling eggs as kids on ranches—to running a multi-million dollar organization with nearly 50 employees. They also dive deep into the inspiration and unique offerings of their joint product venture, Barrett Bergmann Home.

Dwayne and Kyle shared the story of how a change in Dwayne’s travel schedule led to their serendipitous meeting and first late-night conversation at a wedding reception in New Orleans. They detailed their separate, yet similarly organic, entries into the design world: Dwayne started by decorating cakes as a child, then renovating and selling his own homes, which led to a feature in Gulf Shore Life magazine and the founding of Dwayne Bergmann Interiors. The couple also discussed how their shared past of growing up on ranches has recently influenced Dwayne’s creative work. They highlighted their successful joint venture, Barrett Bergmann Home, which features a line of unique, story-driven products like luxury bedding, fragrances, and a vanity program that allows designers to co-brand. Finally, Dwayne explained his strategic decision to grow his design business by acquiring Freestyle Interiors, a move that doubled his firm’s size and created time for him to focus on product development.

Gail, Dwayne, and Kyle also discussed:

If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full shownotes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s14-e1-shownotes

Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors.

Well, welcome to the Creative Genius podcast, Wayne and Kyle. I am so excited to have you here and we’ve gotten a chance to get to know each other over the last year or so. And you’ve told me this wonderful personal story about how you two met and I’d love for you to share that.

Dwayne, I’ll you take the lead.

Sure. So I do think there is something serendipitous about the way that we met. Neither of us were looking for, I think, a long term relationship. I had come out of a very difficult divorce and Kyle was

at the end of a four five year relationship himself. maybe not the best of times when you were looking at it going, okay, I’m ready to meet the person that I wanna be with the rest of my life. So just kind of behind the scenes that was individually happening. But on the serendipitous part, I was working in a project in New Orleans that I had been, it was a two year project and I was in month 18.

of the project and I literally flew in once a month on a Tuesday same flight in the afternoon would get in land go check the project out quickly work all day Wednesday and take an early evening flight out of things like a six six o’clock flight on Wednesday. I always stayed at the same hotel. It was just like clockwork we just did this every month so this particular trip.

My operations manager said, I don’t know what is going on in New Orleans. I can’t get you in anywhere. I can’t get you on a flight. So you’re going to fly in on a Thursday evening. You’re going to work all day Friday. Like you’re going to get in really late Thursday. So you’re not going to go to the project Thursday. You’re going to work all day Friday and you’re going to fly back on a 6 a.m. flight on Saturday because I can’t get you out any other time. OK, I mean, it is what it is.

like an oh by the way you’re staying at a completely different hotel on a different part of town because that’s completely was like thirty five hundred dollars a night or something it was ridiculous so okay it is what it is so I fly in wait Friday morning waiting for my car to arrive and I’m outside of this hotel and Kyle comes up and I was just starting to make small talk you know what

brings you to New Orleans. Because no, I’ve been in New Orleans enough at this point. Like no one is, it’s very transient. No one is just there visiting. Usually they’re doing something and usually it’s a convention or whatever. But he said, oh, I’m here working. said, oh, me too. You know, what do you do? And he said, oh, I’m here for an event that I’m working on. And I said, well, I’m a designer. working. He’s like, oh, well, I have a design firm as well. And so we just chit chatted for a little bit and I handed him my card and said,

If you’re around later and like to get a drink, if I get back, I don’t fly out until tomorrow morning. Would love to hear about a little bit more about what you do and where you’re from and all that good stuff. he said, well, the event is a wedding that I’m doing for a really good friend of mine. And the wedding is this evening. So I doubt that I can meet you. It’s going to be a busy day.

But why don’t you text me? Here’s my number. Why don’t you text me or give me a call around 10 o’clock tonight and I’ll know, you know, what, what, you know, if I’m going to be, if I’m going to be back at the hotel and we can, you know, maybe be late, late at the bar. So I text him at 10 and he said, I’m still at the reception. Why don’t you come over? And I was like, hell no.

I am not crashing a wedding, period. That is not my style. One, I’m not dressed for a wedding. Two, I can’t imagine crashing a wedding. And three, I know no one there and I don’t know you. Like the other part was like, this is a kind of a risk. I just met you on the street, literally, this morning. That’s true, that I want to go to a wedding venue.

reception it wasn’t the actual wedding so

that was reception. So he convinced me to go. I ubered over to this venue and walk in and we talked for just a few minutes and he introduced me to the people that he was working with and then he said, hey, let’s go. Why don’t we sit over there? There’s a quiet corner. And we literally went off to this corner at the reception and sat at this table. And this is probably 1045 at this point.

And around, I mean, we just started talking like this just nonstop back and forth. no, think we both lost track of time. And one of his workers came over and just ask a couple of questions. And she came back and he said, my goodness, we we’ve got it. We’ve got to go. I’ve got to help them get all of this torn down. We had been talking so directly and were so just engrossed with each other and the conversation they had completely.

torn down the entire reception, had everything packed and it was two o’clock in the morning. And she’s like, no, everything is done. We just need to tell you that it’s time to go. We all need to leave. Everything is packed up. So he drove me back to the hotel, said good night. He went on his way and kind of left it at, okay, you’re in Texas, I’m in Florida, kids, you have businesses, I have businesses. Let’s try to…

You we’ll try to keep in touch, but it was one of the things it’s like you’re really cool. I don’t know how this would ever work.

next morning.

I did. So I had so I didn’t really sleep. I had to get up at four. So I was you know, I sort of like got my stuff together and the airport so on the on the flight I was like at six maybe he did sleep so I texted him you know it was really nice meeting you and safe travels on your way back to Texas today and he started texting and we never stopped.

That’s so cool. And how many years ago was that?

Going on, it’ll be four in literally seven days. Oh wow.

Well, congratulations.

Thank you.

And I’m glad that you just reminded me that it will be, it’s four days. I just made a calendar mark on that. It’s crazy. It’s been with our work, but it is funny. Let me, let me tell you one thing, Gail, that you already know about Dwayne Bergman. When he ever says I wasn’t dressed for something, he’s not being honest. He looked like he had walked out of, as my grandmother would say, a Spiegel catalog. And, and when we met, had on, working this event, I had on a

a cap and a dirty t-shirt with floral stains all over it, shorts and tennis shoes, and he was dressed to the nines. So don’t let him fool you on that part.

Yeah, we know all about his dressing style. that’s a great story. Well, you both have had a really interesting journey. And I’m going to start with you, Kyle, about how you got into design.

actually it was, it’s very interesting how it all happened. Whenever I was, I was living in Dallas in my early twenties and, I had always had a, an interest in florals. I worked for TXU energy, in large commercial industrial side of customer service. But, I had a good friend that serviced a lot of very high end clients in Dallas, with their floral needs, would go in weekly or for,

for parties and things like that. And I started helping on the side just because it was something I enjoyed doing when I was off work. And so that was kind of the start. I was also in Selam, a licensed realtor. And so one of the first houses that I did, I sold a large ranch home to some clients from Florida. And the lady looked at me she said, I don’t know where to even start.

to decorate this house. You know, I’m so excited to have it. I said, well, I’ll help you. And so that’s how I started. And then it just spread from there. And then, so I would sell a home and then a lot of times I would turn around and help them redesign the home. And then my design business took off so fast that I had two businesses going at once along with a party equipment rental store and a cattle ranch in East Texas. So staying, we’re staying very busy, but that’s how it started was just by fate. And,

And I’ve been addicted ever since.

That’s a great story. my gosh. You guys have such good stories. So Dwayne, you were at our recent boardroom retreat in Scottsdale and you also shared this story about decorating cakes. And I’d love to hear that story again.

Okay, so the colorful part about the story. So really, you need to have my mother’s face reaction that you can see as I tell the story. I always tell her like if you didn’t really understand that your son was slightly different than your you know, my older brother than you were not looking because I started decorating cakes when I was in third grade.

Like with 4-H took a cake decorating class and then they were like, oh my goodness. I mean, I learned how to do the roses in a minute and it was putting out all these things. And so I got all the tips and all of the bags and I made my first like three tier wedding cake with the.

You this is the Midwest, so it had the bridge. If you remember the plastic that went to the two other two tiers on the side down to another bridge. So, you know, that was my first wedding cake that I did. And.

just from then on, I would get requests and I made decent little cash for, you know, a fourth, fifth grade. mean, I would make four or $500, you know, for a big wedding cake would be like $300. And so for the little sheet cakes, I were doing like a farm scene sheet cake, I can make these little pigs and sheep and whatever, know, so John Deere tractors.

So I would have this little side business as a as an elementary kid. And we get calls for birthday cakes and anniversary cakes. And so sometimes my mom would make the actual cake itself and then I would just do the decorating. She would help me with that. I was at that point. I mean, I can’t say I was an established baker at that age. I could definitely do the decorating, but I needed a little bit of help to make sure the cakes were always consistently. The right.

You know the right. Moistness and flavor and all that good stuff she would help with that but yeah I started I think that creative side started really early even painting and stuff like my mom still has a horse painting that I did when I was maybe first or second grade. And then all the art always enter every all the art contest and all that good stuff so it was that part was innate and.

You know that looking back I mean I didn’t I don’t think I realize any of that at that point that okay there’s a creative side but it just came out anyway there I mean again like what nine ten year old boys are decorating cake this is.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody that did that at nine or ten years old.

It’s not it’s not like a normal. Hey, okay I’m gonna go make wedding cakes as a fourth grader, but I enjoyed it I had fun and it was it was a kind of a way of just saying This is really pretty and I guess if you boiled it back the the whole idea was I liked making things look neat and tidy and pretty and interesting and three-dimensional and that’s like I mean going back to the farm cake like they were three-dimensional animals like I would they weren’t like just flat with

star tip whatever i like actually made where they sat on top of the cake and anyway

Which kind of ties in with you both having grown up on ranches. So tell me about that. I guess you two were just meant to be together.

I left mine.

I’ll jump in first and you can, cause your ranch story is way better than mine. I ran away from that whole part of my childhood for whatever reason. So one of the interesting things about meeting Kyle is that was such a huge part of my life for a long period of time, including riding and showing horses competitively and having a rural

farm Midwest background and being raised and knowing how to roll your sleeves up and get dirty and put up hay and drive a tractor and all of those things are fantastic. in my late 20s, I just, I like hard stopped and stopped riding horses and really left that entire part of my being.

I’m behind and had just close that book completely until I met Kyle and then started to sort of re engage and.

I know it’s impacted my current aesthetic, overall perspective of design and just being able to even tap into a different level of creativity. And to that extent, I’ll make the statement about the furniture collection. I drew every single piece sitting at

Our little round table in our guest house at the ranch and I don’t think I would have been able to create the designs and certainly not the quantity of designs if there wasn’t this whole rest, but kind of this piece and sort of reconnecting to the past and coming full circle and going, okay, you don’t have to shut a chapter. You can still evolve and that can still be a part of who you are as well as the more metropolitan.

European things that you like. You don’t have to give up some things in order to enjoy others.

Well, sometimes just reconnecting with whatever your past is, is a really important thing because it’s just, who you are. It’s who made, it is what made you who you are today. And I just remember seeing a picture of, you were texting me a picture, Kyle, when you were on vacation this summer and there was Dwayne in his blue jeans out there. I don’t know if you were feeding the pigs or.

the

Yeah, I was on the back of the chutes I was coating them with fly spray and warmer

my gosh. Yeah. my gosh. Well, you too have learned the work ethic, haven’t you? Over the years.

It’s kind of funny when I was growing up, just a little side story. I was always an entrepreneur. really wanted to, you know, I wanted to make money. wanted to, I wasn’t a normal kid at all. I was in the creek bottoms and climbing trees and working cattle and riding a horse all the time. But when I was about,

you

six or seven, I had a little red wagon like most kids, but I had chickens in a garden and I would literally, my mother would help me wash the eggs and clean the vegetables and put them in little bundles and I would go through the whole neighborhood and I would sell out. And I’m not sure if they bought it because it was great produce or they felt sorry for me, but I took such pride in that. so excited. And I tell a funny story about myself that, you know, when most kids,

had a go-kart, I had a goat-kart. I had a goat at the ranch that literally would pull this cart that my dad had made for me. And everybody in town just thought it was the funniest thing because if you’ll remember those little brooms that were small, that’s how I would steer it. I would pat him on either side and he would turn right or left and woe would make him stop. We never figured out reverse, but.

Ha

It definitely was interesting growing up on the ranch and memories that I will never ever forget and I think it’s definitely made me part of who I am.

It’s so funny. Thanks for sharing. I hadn’t heard that one. was a one. Okay, a goat cart.

Yep, how’d it go?

It’s real.

Oh my gosh. I could hang out with you, listen for hours to your stories. So, Dwayne, you don’t have a design degree, you have an MBA. And what led you to be a designer? And tell us a little bit about how you started your firm in the first place.

Sure, so I, addition to being raised on a farm and roll, my uncle and my grandfather and my dad worked part of the time as well in construction. they were, they built homes, they built barns, was around all of that my whole life. So there was, there’s always a knowledge of the construction side of the world.

But to be frank, design and interior design wasn’t even anything that anyone ever spoke about in the part of the country where I grew up in Missouri. It just wasn’t like I didn’t know anybody who was a professional designer. It was either you were an art teacher or you were in some type of more visual arts, but it just wasn’t a career path that I didn’t even know it existed.

probably later in my 20s when I first had some additional exposure to true professional interior designers. And that’s after I got recruited by the Home Depot. And then I was working on the HD Supply side and we had a division called Creative Touch Interiors. there’s some other touch points along the way, but that impacted the interior design side. But really that was the timeframe where I got

A lot of exposure to interior design plans and reading the plans and looking and sourcing products that were specified for those plans. And then getting very involved in the projects and some of the project management pieces of that. So. It was kind of an interesting time and some interesting exposure to that, but. Even though there was exposure on on. On the professional side, and then the personal side.

the true design piece, again, it just sort of happened organically. So I bought my first house when I was 19. It was a small like 1700 square foot house. I paid $71,000 for it, think, $71,500. And I was telling Kyle the other day, I did all the wallpaper myself. I painted everything myself. I think I did everything but hang.

Are wire the light fixtures. I’m pretty sure I brought somebody into wire the light fixtures but you know, I laid the carpet and you know did all this stuff on my own and About a year later there was I this is when I was riding and showing horses. I had a client came and spent the weekend and He’s like, you know, my my sister is moving to this

to this area and she wants a smaller house, think she’d like to buy the house. I sold the house for $125,000. I probably had $10,000 of like actual cash. And again, this was dating myself, but almost 30 years ago now. So, you know, that was a lot of money to go from, you know, 71 to 125. And there were no realtors involved in

You know, it was just a nice it was a nice thing and so that kind of parlayed I started, you know, I buy a house. I would do my thing to it. I’m living it and every single one would somebody would come and make an offer and typically want everything but my clothes. So.

I just did it.

I wouldn’t sell my clothes, but they were like, look, just your immediately personal items, but they would want all the art and just have everything was done. So I did that multiple times. And then in 2009, I bought a, would have been my largest project. So it was about a 4,200 square foot home on an acre lot. And if you recall, that was not a great real estate time.

In two thousand eight two thousand nine markets were not really great so this house had been listed it was originally listed for about nine hundred thousand and I had just watched it was in a great community and the pricing came down and I ended up buying it for like four hundred and fifteen thousand I think but it was terrible it was really really bad.

There’s no way to describe the pictures that I saw. mean, you really should go into a little bit of detail about some of the things this house had because it was, it would have made.

We don’t have we don’t we don’t have all day for that. But what I will share is the real tour that had the house listed. She met me at the door. I walked in and she was like, you know, thanks for coming to see the house. And I was like, OK, I’d like to see the rest. She’s like, really? Everybody walks in and walks back out. And I said, yeah, I want to see the house. That’s why I’m here. But the one thing I will say is the master suite you walked.

into the primary bedroom area and it was kind of open into this closet. had a sunken round tub, carpeted in pink carpet.

the

Old mirrors those of the closet doors had gold gold framed mirrors all around the closet so that that’s what that was your view from the the bedroom as well. So you stepped up on this pink carpet into this area. You walked around a pink carpeted sunken round tub so very like 70s Vegas inspired. So anyway, that that’s one of the elements and why most people walked out. So I anyway I did I completely.

I ripped this house apart. The biggest renovation I ever did, including adding steel beams to structurally open up. So I took this very chopped up house and opened everything up. And in that time, again, if you think stylistically, was before we had really gotten into that industrial modern movement. but that’s where I took this house. So I did like walnut stained

concrete floors throughout. We had an exposed steel staircase with chunky walnut treads and stainless steel railings. just the entire house was, it was just not a typical house for the time timeline or the timeframe. then it was also much more modern than we were still seeing, especially in Florida. We were still in that Mediterranean. We were still stuck in that moment.

So I had a charity event at the house and 1 of the people that came was the editor. I mean, it was editor and owner of Gulf shore life magazine and they were doing their initial annual edition of what they call home or at home. think is what they call it now. They just call it home, but it was called at home and they would feature. I think it was 8 or 9 properties throughout Southwest Florida and up to.

this one they had they had done I think they’d done one other edition and they in all the homes were in were in Naples. So they were looking to try to showcase a little bit more modern and they he was having he was having a lot of challenges so he just approached me at the after the event and said you know I would love to feature your home and again I was unaware of like how that any of that works I had never been exposed to that so they they came in they photographed the house staged it photographed it did a

It was like an 8 or 9 page feature and then the questions were, know, who was the designer? Well, I did the design work. Who was the architect? Well, I didn’t have an architect. did all I did all of that. Who was the general contractor? Well, I pulled my own permits and hired my, you know, my subcontractors. So I started getting phone calls after this was on the newsstands for.

several people that had renovation projects. I was like, and this is the part that I feel the worst about now is I was like, I have a real job. I am not a designer. I work a full-time job. I have an MBA and I work for a company and whatever else. So I was very dismissive. And so finally, after the fourth or fifth call, my partner at the time said, why don’t you just try it?

Like what do you have to lose? You’ve been open and honest with them that you’re not a professional designer, that this was your hobby and you like doing this. Because the article kind of got into some of that that I had done several other homes and all this good stuff. So I said, know what, you’re right. Why not just try it? So I chose what I thought would be the most challenging project and client of anyone who had called.

And did the project in the evenings and weekends while I was working and it turned out fantastic. And she referred me to like three other people. And so when I resigned from my my my role, we had eight active projects that I had been working on. And I worked from seven or eight o’clock at night till three or four o’clock in the morning. And then I worked all Saturday.

Every saturday and sunday so when talking about starting your firm. I did start my firm technically while i was employed working nights and weekends. And you even when i get my resignation i mean they asked for an extended period of time just to offload my job so i always say i don’t i don’t feel like i didn’t need to service to my employer.

While while working and again two separate fields at the time, but. I didn’t have any expectations of of of creating a large firm at the time. I simply enjoyed. All of the design work and it was all renovations at that point, so all remodels and it was very rewarding. It was a lot of fun.

hired two people very quickly to work with me within the first 60 days after being officially launched. And it just took off. And never stopped working 18 hours a day for the most part for the last 12 years. So that’s the, I think that’s the backstory.

Well, that’s definitely a glutton for punishment doing all of that. And because you both run several businesses, so Kyle, I’m going to give you a chance to kind of tell us a little bit about that. And the two of you have a line of products together. You have furnishings for vanities, have florals, you have candles, you have all sorts of things. So share a little bit about how that whole business.

Well, something I’m extremely excited about and I tell designers and shop and store owners when we see them at market. I have to apologize before I get started because it is exciting. We have a company, Barrett Bergman Home, which is shopbbh.com. We are designers for designers and in that, which includes the shop owners. But it’s a company that Dwayne and I

Dwayne already had a small part of this idea starting whenever he and I met and it kind of exploded from there. We have a fragrance line that is just absolutely wonderful. I’m so proud of it. It’s really been great. We’ll have 12 cents by the end of the year with three holiday cents added to that as well. Our top of bed is very, very unique and amazing.

What is it, Dwayne? 500 different fabrics you can choose from for designer? Thank you. I thought it was right. But then we have several that are already pre-mades, but the needle is amazing. Our sheeting is just top of the line. Dwayne and I have probably slept on a hundred different sheet sets over the last three years. It’s been a very long process to put this together before it was launched.

583 to be exact.

Learning as we go in many areas because it is some of these are new for us. We have a floral line that we’re so proud of that was launched at High Point Market and had a really great response from I had a florist for many, many years in Texas and I never liked artificial florals at all because they looked artificial and I think at the last count we went through a little over 1000 stems of florals choosing the very best quality.

of the most realistic, the best feel before making our arrangements. And right now, I think we’re at about 114 different arrangements that I would put up against any competitor. I’m really, really proud of our florals. DeWayne has an amazing vanity program that is very unique to the market, Handmade USA. But we actually can brand the designer’s name on the inside of the door.

which they, though it’s, it’s, it’s Dwayne’s design, they can put together the look that they like. And that would be, they would get the credit for that design every time the door was open. It’s a reminder of who, who that designer was. So, and that’s kind of how we’ve tried to do the entire Barrett Bergman line is even with our, our pillows. We have a Mulberry silk pillow that is just absolutely like sleeping on a cloud, but it comes in a great canvas bag.

We can personalize the front on the leather label there. Our leather products are from Peru. Absolutely wonderful Peru in Italy. I actually traveled to Peru set with a artisan at 110 year old company. The gentleman is 82 years old and has worked there since he was seven. He started sweeping the floors and so he has been there that many years and though we didn’t speak the same language, we created a

respect and bond, would show him what I wanted done. And he would do the work and show me. And after several attempts, we came up with some really amazing products that just aren’t on the market. But one of our main things that we wanted to do is make a promise to designers and shop owners that if one of our products were placed in their house, it would be something that they wouldn’t go to a big box store or the internet and find that it would be a unique.

that product that they would place in their clients home. One thing I do love to tell designers and shop owners is you can take a beautiful piece of accessory and place it in someone’s home and it’s beautiful. But if you have something that you can place that has a story and you can tell that story about how it was produced by a 110 year old company.

by a man that’s worked there since he was seven years old. He’s 82 and he made this with his hands. It goes from a beautiful piece to an heirloom because what, and it still gives me chills and makes me know that we’re doing the right thing here because for people in the design industry, how wonderful is it to be able to share that with your client? Not as a sales tool, but as a tool to show the importance of the product. You could have someone, Gail could buy a

One of our trays, for example, are our leather frames and someone comes over says, wow, that’s a beautiful tray. And then Gail gets to tell the story. Let me tell you about this tray. It makes it so much more important. And that’s something that really excites us about Burt Bergman home.

That’s great. Well, it’s kind of exciting. And besides all of this, you’ve also grown by acquisition. So Dwayne, you might want to share a little bit about that because you bought a business a while back. And that is a great way to expand your business. But tell us about how that all came about.

Sure, so I started working on acquiring a new business prior to covert actually. And so this was these were kind of ideas that I put into motion. Late 2018, the beginning of 2019 and I was looking at a business on the East Coast of Florida. And it was a it was an interesting design firm. They also had a retail.

presence about a 5,500, 6,000 square foot furniture showroom in Fort Lauderdale in addition to the design business that was adjacent. So I thought, this would be interesting. It’ll give a little bit of retail exposure and kind of expand our design work from the East Coast to the West Coast. at that point, I had had several projects on the East Coast of Florida. So I thought, OK, that won’t be so bad of having

You know, to go back and forth between the two sides and for people who aren’t aware. So the Fort Lauderdale from Fort Myers is about 2, 2 and a half hours. So manageable to go and come back in the same day. I’m not easy, but manageable. However, during the cobit timeframe. Everything being shut down, we were right in probably the last 90 days of due due diligence.

And I just pulled the plug. It’s like there are so many so much uncertainty and. I’m unsure with any any retail environment at that point, so that deal I just let it let it go. And. Again, I think sometimes in the universe when you put things out that you want to do that, I got contacted by faith fix who the owner of freestyle and she just.

You know, just reached out and it was just general conversation. She just said, you know, I’ve seen your work. I commend you that you launched your business in Fort Myers instead of Naples. She’s like, I thought I would try to do that 40 years ago and tried it and quickly, you know, reassessed and focused on the Naples market. So she’s like, I just I’m just.

Very impressed that you were able to grow the size of firm because at that point I had 20, I 2526 employees in DBI and we were doing, you know, 50 to 75 projects a year at that that timeframe. So. We just started talking and after and they were just casual like maybe maybe meet every 6 or 7 weeks and after a few.

few meetings she point blank said you know are have you ever thought about growing your business and I said absolutely I in fact I tried to buy this company in Fort Lauderdale and I’ve been sort of looking at you know different things that pop up I was like I’m not working directly with a broker but you know I do have some feelers out and she said well interestingly enough you know I’m I’m

nearing the timeframe where I need to figure out what my succession plan is. So that’s how it all started. And we spent another year simply working out details, really making sure our cultures would align and a lot of our thoughts and values were similar. So we were able to put a successful deal together. And I took

took full ownership of that company on and she’s still a part of the business and plans on being there for as I’m happy to have her involved in the gauges as long as she wants to I know she has grandchildren that pull her to the east coast into the west coast both New York and California so that’s one of the benefits of.

Adult children, know, adult children and getting to that stage when you have grandkids and so I don’t know what the long long long term, you know, looks like for her. But what we have we have a very strong working relationship and. As long as she wants to stay involved, I’m sure we will have. A role for her to play so that has that’s they were the same size of firm that.

that I had in Fort Myers. So we pretty much doubled in size immediately. And then I wanted to enact a little bit different strategy. And that was part of, as I assessed this acquisition, what it could do for me in terms of my other future plans and longer term goals. So it’s really worked out well. It’s allowed me to re-divert work to the

the freestyle location reduce the number of designers that are under the DBI brand while we’ve increased the number of employees at the freestyle location. So we’ve really kind of taken this, taken the approach of diverting a decent amount of design work out of DBI to freestyle. And that has allowed me a little bit more time and energy to focus on

Product development, launching and growing the the barrett Bergman home. Business and then positioning ourselves for kind what we want to do over the next 2 to 5 years. So. Acquisitions, I think are an amazing way to grow. They all have their pros and cons not something that you should do without a lot of thought and careful consideration. And patients.

And I think that’s the other part. I mean, it’s definitely something that you need to be. Ready to to have back and forth conversations. And if I think the most important thing is that the cultures are not very closely aligned, it can be extremely difficult.

Well, it’s really interesting because you’ve built all these businesses. So obviously you’re, you’re an empire builder, both of you. And it’s really cool to watch this because you’ve gone in, is it 13 years? I think you said when you started this business. And so at this point you are, I don’t know if you want to share this, but you’re welcome to, if you want to say what you’ve built it to, how many people, revenue, whatever you feel comfortable sharing.

Yeah, I, we’re a little over. I always have to check the, the employee count, but we’re just under 50 employees. Currently and. You know, I’m very proud we’re a multi million dollar. Organization collectively, we, you know, we manage a significant significant amount of projects.

But we have and I always tell people that that’s because we have a large design designer base and so when you have 13 14 15 designers that you know can manage four to five projects You know when at that point you say you have 50 to 60 projects, but you’re spreading them across 12 to 15 designers, then it really allows each designer to have three to five

key projects that they’re focused on and in my experience, that’s a really good number for most even at large project size. mean, most of the time designers can handle three, five, seven, even up to ten projects if they’re more furnishings and decor. So we’re very, very blessed. We have we’ve had as a solid

Kind of growth trajectory and year over year for the most part. And we’ve been able to manage the storms that have have come through the economy and the different changes. But but that goes to speak to the quality and level of designers that. Have have always been associated with both Duane Bergman and freestyle and that’s not by accident. It’s there we have high expectations.

We do believe that we give them all of the resources that they need and there’s a lot of independence for the designers that work with us to be creatively expressive, to run their projects the way that works best for them. While at the same time having a very solid grounded base and resources for them to lean on, which allows them to be totally engaged into the creative side and the client servicing.

Side of this business without having to be mired into all of the logistics and everything that happens behind the scenes as well as all the overhead and strategic things that we have to address on a regular basis as as owners.

Sure, absolutely. Well, we’re at the end of our time and I just would love it if maybe the two of you will give me three great takeaways for people who are listening to this who might be interested in growing their businesses and what would you like to share? Kyle, I’ll start with you.

I would say dream big and don’t be scared. Be cautious and careful, but never stop dreaming because if you can dream it, it can happen. I think that’s probably all wrapped into the same question, but it’s, if there’s something you want to do or a direction you want to go do it, don’t be scared to hold back. If you have a design, a client that you’re working with and you’re scared to throw an idea out.

It may be the best idea that the project has. So dream big, dream wild, and live life to the fullest when it comes to your designs.

So first and foremost, there’s no substitute for hard work. If you really, building off of what Kyle was saying, if you really want to make something happen, it’s going to require hard work. And if anyone has ever told you otherwise, then I would have lots and lots lots of questions for them and might be coming from different resources and things like that. But one,

If you want to make something happen, you’ve got to be prepared to to work extremely hard for that too. And I was on a panel recently and I mentioned the word, you know, whatever you learn from your failures and the one individual replied, you know, I’ve never failed. I’ve only learned from things that didn’t maybe go the way I had planned. And while I agree that that’s a positive spin and we all need to practice being positive.

I’m a very direct, very realist and I don’t mesh words a lot. look, we all fail period is what we do with that. And so yes, we can treat it as a lesson or we can get depressed about it. But my second, my second piece of advice is don’t be afraid of failure. That’s the most valuable way that we learn. so learn from your failures, get back on the horse immediately. And, you know, I always say,

If you’re going to fail, fail quickly, document everything in that process so you don’t make the same mistakes twice, apply the knowledge that you learned, and continue on with your strategy and your goal unless during that failure you identified that your strategy was flawed. So, you know, I think that whole part is really key. We all get way too tied up with being back to what Kyle was saying, with being scared of failure.

And then the last is be patient. Especially in the world we live in right now, I think there’s this idea that we should have immediate gratification. And building a business does not happen overnight. Building success does not happen overnight. We need to have goals and we need to set, you know, to set

our eyes on those goals and do everything that we need to accomplish them. But it does require patience. So that and that’s one that we we don’t always have as designers.

No, we do not. You are absolutely correct. Well, you guys are just wonderful and thank you so much for being on the podcast. And I know that everybody will enjoy hearing what you had to say. So thank you again for your time.

Thank you for having me.