Two years after a panel we hosted about why you should work with interior designers, we invited panelist and interior designer Kristen Rivoli back to the Boiler Room to reminisce, as well as to check in about how things have changed.

The three clips we listened to from the original panel: 

• Kevin’s strong feelings on interior designers (16:02); 
• Kristen’s ideas on how to find a designer if you’re a builder (32:00); 
• and the importance of being on the same page with everything before the client gets wedded to something (49:00).

Kristen’s “Boombox Story” also came up, with special mention of her “Mixtape Story,” featuring “I Alone,” by Live’s best album, Throwing Copper, back when she was “dating her husband.” Pearl Jam, the Police, and the Beastie Boys also got a shoutout. We were getting major Nora Ephron vibes. 

Note: we jumped right into this episode with Kristen and Kevin reminiscing about the panel almost as soon as she walked through the front door. Quick to hit the “record” button, this meant we didn’t get the formal introduction to this episode. The subject matter—introducing designers to builders—is something both Kevin and Kristen feel particularly passionate about, so things quickly took off, and the vibe was just too good to interrupt. 

Anything involving a discussion of our team is worth revisiting, so having an entire 90-minute panel on this subject in a room full of some of the best of the best in the Boston build-design community was an awesome experience worthy of numerous podcast episodes. For the first of this revisiting, we went with fellow builder, Eric Adams, of Adams + Beasley Associates. Winner of the Boston Globe’s “Top Places to Work” five years in a row, Eric has a lot to say about how to run a construction company.

Eric also shared the first “Boombox Story,” something we'll be asking all of our guests to share in future episodes. While it won’t bring you to tears, it’s unexpectedly amazing. Like if Steven Spielberg was going to do a movie short of a Boombox Story, this would be it.  

The three moments we brought Eric in to revisit were Kevin’s favorite part of camaraderie—eating lunch together; Eric’s story of a moment that’s stayed with him involving this adage: “When money isn’t a problem, everything else is”; and another moment Eric had on the panel about democratizing success.