Creative Genius Podcast

In this captivating episode, Gail Doby sits down with fine art photographer and interior design graduate George Diebold. Gail shares her personal journey as a collector of George’s work, highlighting how consistent weekly email marketing over several years eventually led her to select two major pieces for her new home. George reflects on opening his commercial studio in 1978 and building a reputation with Fortune 500 companies in New Jersey before earning his interior design degree at age 50. He discusses why interior designers are sometimes hesitant to specify photography over traditional paintings and breaks down the technical nuances of dye sublimation (metal printing), which offers extreme archival durability and vibrant color depth. George also shares the stories behind his Hawaiian landscapes and floating plumeria shots, while offering a critique of AI’s impact on the authenticity of the photographic medium. Photo used with permission. © GEORGE DIEBOLD In this episode, Gail and George discuss: Long-Term Nurturing via Email: How Gail followed George’s weekly emails for 6–7 years before purchasing art for her new office space. Going Back to School at 50: Why a home renovation project on Kauai inspired George to enroll in an interior design program alongside 20-year-olds. Why Designers Hesitate on Photography: Overcoming the myth of photography’s “reproducibility” and avoiding the trap of generic, copycat imagery. The Backstory Behind the Art: Why telling the harrowing story of long-exposure lava captures or aquarium-shot floating plumeria helps designers sell photography to clients. The AI Debate: Why altering real-world moments with artificial intelligence contradicts the foundational purpose of recording a genuine moment in time. To browse George’s works yourself, visit his website https://www.georgediebold.com If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full show notes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s15e5-shownotes https://youtu.be/qR2WcsTLR_o Episode Transcript Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors. Click to show transcript GAIL DOBYWell welcome to the Creative Genius Podcast, George. GEORGE DIEBOLDThank you very much, Gail. GAIL DOBYWell, it’ll be fun to have this conversation. I have ⁓ I’ve followed you for a very, very long time. I think I started looking at your photography. I bet it’s been six or seven years ago. And yeah, and I was thinking about it and every time I would get one of your emails, don’t know how I got on your email list, but I would look at your work and I would browse through all those things thinking, I really want one of your pieces. And then when we finally bought this new house, and you can see the picture behind me. That was the one that I bought from you earlier this year. And I just bought a second one from you this year. And I ⁓ am really happy to have those pieces because they’re really interesting and of course beautiful, beautifully shot. So thank you. That’s how I got to know you. GEORGE DIEBOLDThank you. ⁓ yeah, you you were on my constant conta I do a weekly email ⁓ image ⁓ mailing ⁓ primarily to designers and collectors. And ⁓ I guess that’s initially how you found me. Yeah. GAIL DOBYRight. Right. And so it does work to do email marketing because it did take a long time. I just didn’t have a spot to put things in my other house, but when we built this house, it’s larger, so I had the space to do it. So I finally have my own office, which is great. Perfect. ⁓ yeah. So absolutely. And I’m enjoying these a lot. I look at them every day and just admire them. So and I get to see them in my background all the time. ⁓ Yeah. So let’s talk about your background because you actually are a photographer and you have an interior design degree. And it was kind of later in life that you did that. So talk to me about what came first and ⁓ what brought you to interior design. GEORGE DIEBOLDI opened my studio, my photography studio in 1978. ⁓ a bit after college. I graduated in 75. ⁓ I got my design degree when I was 50. And how that happened was we would spend ⁓ a big block of the summer, ⁓ my wife and my son and I ⁓ vacationing and me shooting in Hawaii. And ⁓ I I found after a while that it really didn’t matter that I was back in my studio, that I was still able to run my business from Hawaii. So we decided that we would buy a home out there and we decided on the island of Kauai, bought a home, ⁓ and I made plans to bring it down to the studs and renovate it and then turn the garage into a studio. So I could go back and forth between Hawaii and the East Coast. So I did some rough sketches and I made some detailed notes. I got turned on to an architect. And when she saw them, she said, you should consider studying design. That’s really as far as it went. when I returned back to the East Coast, I just said, you know, all right, I’ll do that. So I enrolled in Keene University’s design ⁓ program. ⁓ So for about two years I was running my studio, then I would jump in the car ⁓ almost every day, drive to ⁓ Union, New Jersey, where the campus was, have two or three classes. Every night I was doing homework and then plus coordinating the rebuilding of the house in Hawaii. So ⁓ it was a bit of a crazy time, but I had a I had a lot of fun and I was definitely the oldest person in the class, that’s for sure. ⁓ I ⁓ you know, I was just surrounded by all these kids, which they thought it was kind of funny. So yeah, it was a good time. GAIL DOBYDid you ever do interior design for clients? GEORGE DIEBOLDI the only thing I ever did interior design for was ⁓ it helping me specifying stuff with people like yourself and doing homes that I owned. ⁓ after it seemed like after I finished my design degree, ⁓ then my business got my photography business got extremely busy again. And ⁓ I was doing a lot of shooting in Hawaii. I picked up a lot of clients in Hawaii. So ⁓ the the short answer is ⁓ no. ⁓ I have a degree in design and ⁓ really I just used it to to help me better explain myself to designers and present myself to your community. GAIL DOBYMm, interesting. Well, and I would have to say that in all the work I’ve done, yes, I’ve selected artwork or I’ve selected photography for clients, but it’s never been one of the dominant things I’ve selected for clients. So I don’t know that we as a trade are hesitant about specifying photography, but maybe we’re just not thinking about that as one of the things that we’re planning our designs around. So why do you think designers don’t think about photography very much? GEORGE DIEBOLDI think th there are a couple of reasons. I think designers are hesitant to ⁓ for one thing because they’re hung up on the premise that a painting there’s only one painting and a photograph can be reproduced multiple times, which there’s really no denying that. But ⁓ oddly ⁓ I can ⁓ really not even remember a time, even though my editions are extremely small. I c I ⁓ Designers never ask me how many of these are you making? So it doesn’t really seem to be ⁓ a b a big problem for them. ⁓ I I think also, you know, a f a painter gets a canvas and ⁓ you know, it’s like he’s got he’s now he’s creating this thing on the you know, and it’s just like so just a it’s an original thought and and it’s just like his. putting his soul on the canvas and but I think you have to realize for a photographer, especially somebody working ⁓ professionally like I do, it’s so involved, not only from a monetary standpoint, the the investment, I mean, just even like the picture behind you. I mean obviously I had to get to Hawaii. I spent six weeks in Hawaii, which you can imagine what that cost, ⁓ making the prints. ⁓ All of that ⁓ goes into it. So it sort of balances out. ⁓ I I think. But I I think ⁓ really the core thing is that design designers just think that there can be like so many copies of the photograph. ⁓ One of the big problems is that I think a lot of photographers who are trying to get somewhere copy what other successful photographers do. So the result of that is that. Designers ⁓ tend to look at photography and say, another another picture of the Grand Canyon. another picture of this Japanese maple tree in the garden in this exact same. It’s almost like the photographers go and they put the tripod in the exact same spot that somebody successful did. So ⁓ not trying to ⁓ toot my own horn, but I find when people a lot of times the first comment people make about my work is. GEORGE DIEBOLDThey say, it’s different. I I’ve never seen that. Or and I think that’s also partially because I do location work as well as studio work. ⁓ And ⁓ and ⁓ I think that helps me a lot because I have a very wide ranging portfolio. GAIL DOBYMm-hmm. GAIL DOBYMm-hmm. And you do advertising photography too, right? GEORGE DIEBOLDYeah, not to the extent that I ⁓ once did. I mean, that’s really ⁓ when I opened my business, that’s primarily what I did. I did annual report work ⁓ and ⁓ advertising work for like Fortune five hundred company of companies, which I was in that sense I was very lucky to be ⁓ in New Jersey. When I started my business, ⁓ the the the thought was, you know, if you’re gonna be a big time professional photographer, you had to be in New York City. ⁓ anywhere else was just ⁓ it was like Deadsville. But what nobody realized was that most of the major corporations in America had their world headquarters in New Jersey. And I knew New Jersey. So I was able to get in my car almost every day and drive to a meeting with ATT or Sony or any of the pharmaceutical companies. So ⁓ I I was known in New Jersey simply because everybody would see me there. So that’s really how I built my reputation ⁓ in the advertising business. GAIL DOBYInteresting. Well, let’s talk a little bit about specifying photography instead of other forms of artwork. Wha how what’s different about that? And what are some of the things that you would recommend to designers to think about when they’re considering photography? GEORGE DIEBOLDI guess the biggest difference in specifying photography is that there’s a lot of trust. ⁓ even though you followed me for like six or seven years, ⁓ you ordered a print ⁓ without seeing it. ⁓ which is very different than seeing a a finished canvas and saying, like, yeah, I want to, you know, if you go to an art show and you see the canvas and say, Yeah, I want to buy that, I’ll take it. So there’s a certain amount of trust that has to take place with the client and they have to research, you know, the photographer’s reputation, which is that’s not too hard to do. ⁓ what I try to do to minimize this gray area is ⁓ for for ⁓ it wasn’t really a your situation because you seem to know exactly what you wanted. But sometimes I’ll make smaller scale prints and send them to a client so they can see, you know, they can physically hold in their hand a print and see, ⁓ you know, ⁓ what it’s going to be like, except that it’s going to be bigger. ⁓ I can also send ⁓ samples of the medium, you know, whether it’s going to be metal or a fiber print or stuff. I can send that to them. ⁓ I can send them ⁓ samples of frames if they do in fact, you know, put a frame around the piece. So I think the more you just try to give the designer information, I think it increases the comfort level and and and they see that, you know, obviously you’ve done this before, so you wouldn’t have much there wouldn’t be much benefit in me trying to get over on you. I mean, I’m my my I my plan is to is just to sell pictures. So I’m not trying to ruin my reputation by trying to scam people. So GAIL DOBY⁓ yeah. Well you were very helpful. I know that when we were talking about it, I knew that ⁓ I knew the scale I wanted for ⁓ the piece. Well for both pieces. And so ⁓ you were able to guide me and say, yes, I can do that scale, I can do that that proportion. ⁓ And ⁓ and then we talked about what the ⁓ what the format was in terms of doing it on the metal and GEORGE DIEBOLDMm-hmm. GAIL DOBYMaybe just talk about that because I’d never heard of printing on metal ⁓ and you’d mentioned that that it was a lot ⁓ probably more stable. So talk talk about the difference between the backgrounds that you can print on. GEORGE DIEBOLDYes. GEORGE DIEBOLDPrinting on metal, which is also called dye sublimation, ⁓ without getting overly technical about it, which, you know, I can’t get that overly technical because I’m not, you know, it’s it’s very complicated, but it’s basically infusing the metal ⁓ with the dyes. So the dyes, I think through extreme heat, are actually like saturated into the metal and become part of the metal. What this does is it results in it’s extremely archival and it’s very durable. For many years I was a big fan of laminating the images I delivered ⁓ under plexiglass, which is it looks very cool. ⁓ And as long as it’s lit well, you know, you don’t get reflections in it and stuff. But it’s fragile. ⁓ in fact If somebody if if the delivery was anywhere like in the tri-state area, I would almost always insist on me hanging it because I was always ner you know, if you bump the corner putting it up, you could fracture the plexi. ⁓ also the plexiglass has to be ⁓ We we recommend cleaning it with rubber cement thinner and like a hundred percent cotton rag. So you have to be because you know you get that swirl effect on plastic if you cleaned it with a paper towel or something. ⁓ the dye sublimation, the metal, ⁓ I mean, you could literally like take a a ⁓ you know, I mean you should be a little bit more careful than a paper towel, but you could take a paper towel with like Windex and just clean it. So In that sense, it’s ⁓ very, ⁓ very durable. ⁓ as far as the range of colors that it’s available, it’s it’s ⁓ extremely wide. ⁓ and for clients that also want a traditional presentation, I can also deliver ⁓ prints on all kinds of different materials, canvases and fine art papers and stuff like that, where if they’re looking to have something matted and framed under glass. GEORGE DIEBOLDBut even when you go to museums now and you see photography exhibits, there’s there’s a wide range ⁓ of ⁓ ways they’re presented and metal is one of them ⁓ now. I think people have realized how good it is. So ⁓ yeah. I I r I really like it. I mean I think it’s you know. And it also ⁓ they have about five or six different ⁓ levels ⁓ of reflection. You can get it super high gloss. I think the print behind you is one step down from that. I think that’s what we decided on. And then you can go all the way to like, you know, very luster like Matt, which ⁓ I don’t want to do because it’s a little bit flatter. But ⁓ it’s it’s a really great medium. And I don’t know who came up with it, but GAIL DOBYThey were very smart to do that. GEORGE DIEBOLDYeah. GAIL DOBYYeah, so I I ⁓ I really love the piece and ⁓ why don’t you talk about that? How long did it take you to set up for that and take this photograph? GEORGE DIEBOLDI ⁓ I ⁓ I went to the big island. ⁓ I guess this was two years ago. The big island is the island that’s called Hawaii. They actually don’t technically call it the Big Island anymore. They call it Hawaii, which makes it even more confusing for people because the chain of islands is called Hawaii. And now they want to call just the one island Hawaii. It’s where the volcano is and it’s been erupting. ⁓ I specifically went there. Not to photograph the volcano, although that would have been cool, but I wanted to photograph the lava patterns in Volcanoes National Park, which was my primary goal. And that’s what I spent most of my time doing, just doing close-ups of how the lava cooled and the shapes it made. ⁓ And in addition to that, I would travel around the island, which is no small feat, because that’s it’s definitely the big island. I think that’s ⁓ a mistake a lot of tourists make when they go there. They get up in the morning and they they tell the ⁓ the ⁓ guys at the front desk, we’re gonna take a ride around the island today, you know, and then like midnight they get back and they’re just like, God almighty, you know, like ⁓ it’s it’s huge. I mean it’s it’s really big. So this particular location behind you was about an hour ⁓ ride. from the condo I had rented, ⁓ and ⁓ really, really scary roads where the roads are very narrow, there’s no lighting. A lot of times it’s pouring rain, there’s trucks coming at you. So I would drive to this location, I would shoot, ⁓ and the in the case of your picture, it’s almost dark. ⁓ and that’s ⁓ so the camera ⁓ is it’s a very long exposure, which is allowing the water to turn into that silky ⁓ look. And then like in the pitch dark, I would, you know, load up all my equipment and then get in the car and then have this terrifying ride back to my condo. ⁓ which I i every time I was doing it, I was just saying like, you know, ⁓ what am I doing? You know, if really this is just kind of stupid. I mean the odds of like something going wrong. GEORGE DIEBOLDw were a little scary. But ⁓ so th I would hop around to different beaches, which on the big island, the other cool thing you get is you get the black sand beaches. It’s the only ⁓ island that still has the black sand. They also have red sand and green sand, which is r really quite amazing to see. But ⁓ in this case of the picture behind you, that’s just, you know, an example of where ⁓ I don’t know how many years ago, but that’s where the volcano happened to flow down to ⁓ and all those boulders or lava that hit the ocean and cooled and so you get all these fantastic shapes. ⁓ and ⁓ that’s I I I’ve returned there in the sixth I mean I I don’t know, twenty times probably, ⁓ back and forth just going there. ⁓ I would shoot splashing waves during the day. ⁓ And then as night started to fall, I would do these time exposure pictures. So ⁓ and that’s another thing I think that ⁓ just to go back to one of the previous questions, I think clients also like to hear the backstory ⁓ like what I’m telling you now, that gives them like a feeling of ⁓ you know, when they look at it, they can imagine. GAIL DOBYMm-hmm. GEORGE DIEBOLDyou know, the the situation when it was done. That’s a little bit different than, you know, a painting. So I think that’s important for clients. If an interior designer is trying to sell a client on a photographer’s work, ⁓ I think it probably helps if they, you know, make it sound like, yeah, get, you know, you gotta get to know this guy and you gotta hear some of the stories he tells about some of the things he did and stuff. So GAIL DOBYWell, I I don’t have a way to show you the other photo that I purchased from you, but ⁓ the floating plumeria, which I really kept coming back to and kept thinking, I I think I have to have that. ⁓ And ⁓ and I did ultimately get that, but talk about how you did that. GEORGE DIEBOLDThat’s another ⁓ yeah, I have a story for everything. So that that’s another ⁓ the last thing in the world anybody needs to see is another flower picture. I mean, because that’s just what I mean, it doesn’t matter if t if today is the first day you got a camera or you’ve been doing it for fifty years. ⁓ There’s just so many flower pictures that it’s unbearable. But ⁓ I was standing in back of our house one day during this incredible rainstorm and ⁓ when after it would rain for a couple hours, ⁓ it was almost like a river would form ⁓ down the walkway behind our house. And so all this crap was floating, you know, pieces of fence and f ⁓ palm fronds and ⁓ f flowers and all this stuff. And I saw how the flowers were floating down the water. And I said, you know what, that that would be different. If there would be some way I could capture that. ⁓ and I decided that the best way to do it and make the flower look the way I wanted it to look was I bought a big aquarium, big tank, ⁓ and dropped the flowers in the aquarium and shot through the glass so I would get the edge of the water. So that’s where you see that’s the the the Blumaria is floating on the surface, but you also see what’s going on under the surface. ⁓ So I was I was very happy with the way that turned out. I think it really shows the flower ⁓ in a unique way. ⁓ so that’s that story. GAIL DOBYYeah. Well, ⁓ I’m enjoying both of those pieces and I look at them every day and just smile every day as I walk through the room. So that’s always good. GEORGE DIEBOLD⁓ time to go to Hawaii. ⁓ GAIL DOBY⁓ Yeah, I don’t have to. You’ve done it for me. ⁓ Well, what’s a story that a designer can tell about exclusivity, scarcity? ⁓ How would you describe to the client or how would she ⁓ or he describe to the client what it’s about in terms of investing in photography? GEORGE DIEBOLDOkay. GEORGE DIEBOLD⁓ I would have to be brutally honest, and it’s probably true about any kind of artwork. ⁓ the concept of investing in artwork ⁓ is ⁓ I I don’t know if that’s something that anybody should really use as criteria when they’re getting something. Because the chances of you buying ⁓ a piece ⁓ and then thinking that like in a year I’m gonna sell it for more money. You’re probab you know, it’s probably unlikely that you’re gonna be able to sell it for what you paid for it. ⁓ for me, I try to keep the editions very small, eight to twelve pieces. I find it kind of amazing that there’s a lot of photographers now who reproduce images in the hundreds of copies and they call them limited edition. ⁓ It’s almost like it’s a poster. So ⁓ again, I think that ⁓ with any artwork but and photography, it’s gotta be something that you just fall in love with and you’re and you really want it. I mean, I don’t know if you should buy you know, if you if you buy a car, if you buy a fancy car, you’re buying the car because you like the car, not because you’re thinking, I’ll drive it for five years and then I’ll make money on it. That’s probably not gonna happen. ⁓ So ⁓ I think it’s it’s ⁓ I think if a designer is honest with a client and tell them, you know, that that’s really the criteria that they should use, that they should just really pick things that they like instead of thinking of them as an investment. If it goes up in value, that’s great. ⁓ but I don’t know if you can do that with art. It’s pretty tough. GAIL DOBYYeah. Well, here’s a question for you that you and I chatted about this when we were prepping for this and talking about AI. And that is such a huge, huge conversation these days. ⁓ And it’s impacting people’s trust in ⁓ the images that they’re purchasing, because who knows if it’s been altered by AI. So talk to me about your thoughts about AI. ⁓ GEORGE DIEBOLDI think that, you know, for most people, AI is the terminator and you know, they think it won’t be long before, you know, the we’re all dead and and robots are ruling the world. ⁓ All AI is, ⁓ is ⁓ just super powerful computing, which allows ⁓ just ⁓ many different sources to come together to solve a problem. So GAIL DOBYHa ha. GEORGE DIEBOLDI think AI has the potential to destroy the very nature of what the photographic process is. Because for someone who’s interested in the true photographic process, now all of a sudden, and it’s happened almost overnight, now they have to consider which you just mentioned, does the situation even exist? Did it ever even happen? ⁓ And that’s fundamentally ⁓ contradictory ⁓ to ⁓ what photography is. I’m not saying that, you know, you have to live in the past and you can’t enjoy advancements, but ⁓ it’s added a whole nother ⁓ issue, something another thing to consider. ⁓ so I don’t necessarily think it’s good. I think what AI is great at is ⁓ I know my daughter in law, like, you know, she’ll look at a building and say, like, I wonder what it would look like in the Ardeco style. And it’s incredible. I mean, she can change the building to, you know, ⁓ Art Deco style, or let me see what it looks like mid century modern. So in that sense, it’s ⁓ really amazing. And ⁓ I I mean, I I guess my it’s a big issue for my grandchildren in school because they’re told, ⁓ you know, to really avoid, you know, when they’re doing reports and stuff like that to avoid it because obviously it makes homework a lot easier. ⁓ GAIL DOBYIt does, but you can tell if it’s AI. I know that even though I use it to maybe draft something, I have to be ⁓ careful and I have to retrain it all the time with even though it has somewhat of my voice, it still does some very odd things that they just don’t they don’t sound like me. So I have to make it sound like me. GEORGE DIEBOLDYeah. ⁓ and I noticed that too. A lot of I don’t know what it would be, but there’s certain word you can just tell when you’re listening to like an AI voice, every once in a while, I can’t give an example, but it’ll say a word not quite correctly, like it’ll say it like phonetically or I I don’t really know how to d ⁓ describe what I’m saying, but yeah, you can say, Well, wait a minute, but like that sounds like a machine was saying it, you know. So ⁓ So I think based on my notes, I think your next question was to how do I use AI? And and that this is the shortest answer I had for you, which was ⁓ I don’t use it. ⁓ GAIL DOBYOkay. ⁓ Well that’s good to know. Well you’re a little bit on the I and don’t take this word or the phrase the wrong way, but it’s more of the old school, which I think is it’s a lost art to ⁓ do what you do ⁓ anymore. It really is. GEORGE DIEBOLDYeah. ⁓ here’s how I, you know, thought about it w when I was thinking of how to answer your question. Photography was invented to record an exact moment in time and preserve an event or a person or a place that existed so you could see it. ⁓ the whole point of taking a picture of your kid when they’re born was 20 years from now, you can look at the picture and say that’s what Mary looked like when she was. three months old. ⁓ if you didn’t like the way Mary looked exactly and you altered it to make her look like the most beautiful baby, well then what’s really the point? You know, it’s no longer recording that it that event. So ⁓ For a lot of people, AI is ⁓ they they, you know, the younger generation considers it, well, it’s just another tool and an arsenal of ⁓ options like Photoshop or something to create or manipulate an image. But it’s much more than that because, like you said, I’m from a generation where, you know, you shot film, you went in a dark room, and then all of a sudden in this tray you see this thing appear ⁓ and it it was incredible. I mean, you know, it’s just like, my God, you know, e every time, you know, you would be in the dark room. It’s just like, it’s pretty amazing. Look, look, there’s the picture. ⁓ And ⁓ then when computing came along, I mean, it was very exciting, but a little too simple. ⁓ And ⁓ I got into digital photography and Photoshop ⁓ very, very early on. I think I was probably one of the first people who bought a digital back in New Jersey. ⁓ GEORGE DIEBOLDSo I was into it way before ⁓ a lot of my competition were into it. ⁓ I mean within a year my the la I used to spend, I don’t even remember how much, but you know, maybe ten or twenty thousand dollars a month on film and processing. ⁓ And within a year, maybe year and a half, the lab ⁓ that ⁓ I would go to was going out of business. ⁓ because people just weren’t doing it that way anymore. I mean, it was just instead of me shooting a picture and then sending my assistant to the lab and then having him hang around the lab or go get lunch or something, then drive the film back to me, look at the picture, say, okay, we got to make this correction, make this correction, send the assistant back to the lab, hang out, kill some more time, get the film, bring it back. Now you just you push the shutter and you looked at the screen and you said, There’s the picture. So it made it ⁓ so easy, and I don’t know if that’s necessarily good. ⁓ sometimes things can be too easy. ⁓ and it takes ⁓ it takes that creative process away of thinking about. conceptualizing and coming up with ideas and stuff. So ⁓ and that’s not to say that I don’t use Photoshop. I like to clean images up. I balance the color. ⁓ like in the picture behind you, obviously if there was a ⁓ if I couldn’t walk out there on the rocks and let’s say that there was a ⁓ you know an a a tin can laying there, ⁓ obviously I’m gonna retouch out the tin can. But that’s not the same as me GAIL DOBYYeah. GEORGE DIEBOLDputting a zebra ⁓ standing in the water and saying you can’t even believe what I what this picture that I shot in Hawaii. I don’t know how the zebra got there, but there was a zebra standing in the water. So ⁓ that’s that’s the distinction. ⁓ I I would like to see ⁓ that it was there’s photography and then there’s AI photography. I would like it to be very clearly ⁓ understood by people that there’s two different things. Because what’s happened is ⁓ in a very short amount of time, ⁓ and I’m not the only one who feels this way. Every photographer, my my IT person, ⁓ everybody I talk to, they don’t believe anything. Every they just assume everything they see on Instagram is fake, which to be honest with you, ⁓ it it probably is 90% of it. It’s all it’s it’s happened so quickly. ⁓ it’s just it’s amazing how f how quickly it just grabbed grabbed hold and you know, like like a lot of things in society, it’s just like it’s the next new thing, you know. So GAIL DOBYRight. Where do you think photography’s going with AI? GEORGE DIEBOLDNo no place good. ⁓ well, I don’t know I don’t know because in other words, ⁓ you know, if you go and you shoot a picture, ⁓ you and I talked the other day the w up there I it’s i I think it’s by Aspen, right? Maroon Bells or Yes. I mean if you went if you made a point to go all the way up there and shot a picture and then the day you got there the sky was cloudy or it wasn’t very interesting. GAIL DOBYMm-hmm. GEORGE DIEBOLDSo then you just put in, you know, like an amazing sky and you made that sky reflect in the water and stuff. I mean, at the end of the day, it may end up being a lot cooler picture than the picture that I shot. But my way of dealing with things is I would just throw the picture away. I’m the most brutal person ⁓ on my images of anybody. If you’re seeing one of my pictures. I’ve already trashed so many pictures ⁓ and been so hard on myself. ⁓ that ⁓ not only is that what I want you to see, but I went through the effort of making it at that level. But if you can just shoot something and say, I don’t care if the, you know, who cares if there’s, you know, the the sky’s I’ll fix it in the, you know, I’ll fix it later on or You know, I see this picture the other day on Instagram, and it’s a it’s a bison attacking a school bus in in in I think it was in Yellowstone. And like ⁓ A, I’ve been to Yellowstone a million times. I don’t know if there’s any school buses that drive around Yellowstone, but it’s but it’s just like I’m sure there’s a lot of people that see that and they’re just like, my god, can you believe that? Like, look at look at the bison rammed the school bus and like almost knocked it over. And so ⁓ I I I I guess the only thing I could say about it is I do hope that ⁓ there is sort of an appreciation for old school ⁓ and and then there is I guess you can’t stop technology. I do think it’s funny that the college, Montclair University, which was ⁓ by my studio, ⁓ I I noticed that they the ⁓ photography and art students now have to get a film camera and learn how to develop film. ⁓ Which I think is good. Yeah. Because even a lot of the terms in photo not a lot of the terms, all of the terms in Photoshop are terms that, you know, dodge and burn, ⁓ masking, all those terms are things that ⁓ I did in the darkroom. Those are all darkroom terms. And the they were terms from GEORGE DIEBOLDthe nineteen twenties, the nineteen thirties. So I think it’s good that at least now kids understand like where these n these words came from and maybe it’ll make them think about, you know, this. And and some of them will, you know, say, you know what, this is much cooler than faking it. And ⁓ so a couple will carry on the tradition. That’s usually what happens. GAIL DOBYHm. Well, we we’ll see what happens, right? GEORGE DIEBOLDYeah. ⁓ GAIL DOBYWell, ⁓ a couple more questions for you. ⁓ One is just talk about the difference between fine art photography and advertising photography. Two different types of work that you do. GEORGE DIEBOLDThis ⁓ fine i i I don’t know if any a lot of people will agree with me. Fine art is a term, a marketing term that artists came up with to separate themselves from the competition. ⁓ sometimes I’m almost hesitant to use the term fine art because ⁓ it sounds ⁓ like a little too pompous. ⁓ and some i some of the greatest Fine art pieces or pieces that came from advertising campaigns. ⁓ And some of the greatest advertising campaigns were eventually, you know, by some of the great Map and Phot Photography Masters ⁓ were pictures that became prints that you see in a museum. So I did a bunch of video YouTube videos, and one of my YouTube videos was titled Personal versus Commercial Work. And I Point out in that video that I always thought it was funny when I would make an appointment with an art director or a creative director, and they would tell me, bring both your portfolios, your commercial portfolio and your personal work. ⁓ And I never made that distinction for a number of reasons. ⁓ one was because I felt when I looked at famous photographers when I was starting out, I I saw that they Created a look. No matter what they did, you could sort of tell it was one of their pictures, whether they were working or if they just went out on the street and took a picture. If ⁓ I ⁓ bring the art director two books, I’m all now I’m asking him to remember two people. He’s already got enough stuff on his mind. So the chances of him after I leave. He’s kind of it’s it’s just adding to the confusion. It’s better that ⁓ that after the meeting he would say, Well, I don’t know if George Diebel’s gonna be the best person to shoot fashion or food, but he’s definitely the guy we’re gonna want when we have ⁓ a conceptual ⁓ con a conceptual client that we really don’t know how to picture what they do, but this guy’s got t his book had tons of GEORGE DIEBOLDcool ideas and stuff. So he’ll definitely be able to come up with something. So ⁓ I I again th I guess the short answer is I didn’t or at least for me, I didn’t want to make a big distinction between fine art and commercial work. GAIL DOBYMm. Okay. Fair enough. Well, we’d like to end with three different takeaways that you might share with our listeners, things that you would like them to remember from today’s session, ⁓ or things that you’d like to share about photography in general. I’ll leave it to you. GEORGE DIEBOLDThank you. ⁓ People who take an interest in my work, I’d like them to appreciate the journey that brought me to this point. ⁓ I started out as a ⁓ student actually studying painting. I ⁓ I in high school, even though I was a disastrous student, I was introduced to a ⁓ Life magazine illustrator, and I studied with him. So when I went away to college, I actually went away to college as a I’m gonna use the term, but as a fine art major. So I actually started out as a painter. ⁓ I switched to photography just ⁓ just because I decided, you know, what how am I ever gonna make a living doing painting? ⁓ and then I transitioned from that into owning a commercial studio for over four decades and then ⁓ earning a degree in interior design. So that’s important to me that, you know, people see that I’ve alwa always tried to keep moving forward and ⁓ and not just reinventing myself, but ⁓ doing different stuff, ⁓ all ⁓ with a creative mindset. ⁓ I pride myself on being able to explore just about any situation that pops into my head. ⁓ I love working on location, but ⁓ but it’s been a big advantage to me that I had all this studio training because that’s allowed me to ⁓ do a lot of very interesting still life work and also use that knowledge, ⁓ you know, just about lighting and composition and e and and all that, everything that photography entails. ⁓ GEORGE DIEBOLDI never left my still life roots behind. And I think when you look at my website, ⁓ it is different in that there there are photographers who they just shoot the ocean, or they just shoot, you know, women, or they just shoot food and stuff like that. You look at my website, I got pictures of of you know splashing liquids, and then I got pictures of ⁓ you know, the coastline and Hawaii and stuff. So I hope it’s not confusing. I hope it’s more fun and unique to get on my website and explore and look at all the different things I do. ⁓ the last takeaway I would say is as an interior designer who is specifying artwork, ⁓ the choices are mind-boggling. And I would encourage people to present photography. as an exciting option. It’s it’s it’s another option to consider. I don’t think my work or ⁓ necessarily any photography is perfect for every architectural style, but I think in the right environment ⁓ photography can work. ⁓ And and in certain environments my my photography is is perfect for that. ⁓ I think also photographers have to remember and maybe this is what’s come with my interior design training is sometimes photographers are a little too pompous and think too much of themselves and and ⁓ and they have to realize that ⁓ their picture is a part of the big overall project. ⁓ And that’s a good way to think. They’re just another component. I don’t want to belittle it and say you’re no different than a table or a couch, but at the end of the day I mean, if you’re specifying artwork, I mean, ⁓ you know, it’s not supposed to become problem for you. It’s just supposed to be another aspect of the finished overall design project that you’re involved in. So ⁓ I guess that would be my three takeaways. GAIL DOBYAll right. Well, thank you so much for being on our podcast. And we will share in the show notes the link to your website so people can go and take a look at some of your photography and hopefully purchase some too. GEORGE DIEBOLDThank you very much. It was a pleasure and ⁓ thank you so much for enjoying my work and purchasing my work and I hope we keep in touch. GAIL DOBYWe will. Thank you so much. ⁓ GEORGE DIEBOLDThank you, Gail.

In this masterclass episode of the Creative Genius Podcast, Gail Doby dives deep into the complex world of exit planning with former business operator turned wealth manager, Nate Collins. Nate shares his multi-layered financial background and details his experience taking over a struggling, 150-year-old theatrical licensing firm in 2011, engineering a major operational turnaround, and successfully selling it to the largest privately owned music licensing company in the world in 2019. Despite achieving an extraordinary wealth-creating event, Nate candidly shares his struggle with post-exit depression—a phenomenon backed by a PricewaterhouseCoopers study revealing that 75% of business owners profoundly regret selling their companies within a year. He explains how an unexpected injury led him to author a comprehensive exit-planning workbook designed to guide owners through the personal, business, and financial “legs of the stool” during a two-to-five-year exit runway. In this episode, you’ll hear about: The Emotional Toll of Selling: Why 80% of businesses that go to market fail to sell, and why the emotional friction triggers heavy overreactions for unprepared owners. Investing in the Right Advisors: The critical difference between standard accounting and a specialized M&A team (transaction accountants, M&A attorneys, and specialized wealth managers). The Liminal Period: Understanding the psychological phase between identity shifts, marked by feelings of confusion, uncertainty, and worthlessness. Prosperity vs. Well-Being: Nate’s personal shift from chasing personal prosperity to discovering that fulfillment only comes from structural personal well-being. Defining True Purpose: Why purpose is directly tied to being relevant to the lives of other people and serving something bigger than yourself. If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full show notes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s15e4-shownotes https://youtu.be/ErpFF1-lpE4 Episode Transcript Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors. Click to show transcript GAIL DOBYWell, Nate, I’m so glad to have you here today. You have had the most interesting career from trading distressed debt on Wall Street to managing commercial real estate at private equity firms, turning around a theatrical licensing company. And I think you have a few more little tidbits you want to share with me too, so why don’t you go ahead and add to that? NATE COLLINSThanks, Gail. I’m so excited to be on this podcast. thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to your audience. yes, so I have had a very circuitous career. It seems a little bit disjointed. However, at the end of the day, it has always done it has always been financially related. It has always been about investing money. And the two other ones that you mentioned. is after I sold that licensing company, that theatrical licensing company that you discussed, and we’ll discuss that later, I then went on to work at a hedge fund and now I work in wealth management. So yes, you know, always in the financial field. But you may say, wait a second, theatrical licensing, how is that finance? That that sounds like theater. Well, ultimately the real business was entering into agreements with the rights holders, the intellectual property rights holders, and entering an agreement to be a licensing agent on their behalf. And the way that it worked was very similar to real estate investment. We’d pay the the the rights holder up front a large amount of money and then once we had that that the rights to license that property similar to the right to our If you own a busin if you own a a building, you lease it out. In this case, we licensed the property out for a specific amount of time and we try to maximize our return on investment by optimizing those licenses. GAIL DOBYInteresting. Well, you’ve also been a business owner, then that was before you were an a a financial advisor to them. And so how did that help you, eventually selling that theatrical licensing company? NATE COLLINSYes. So I that was such a wonderful such a wonderful chapter in said circuitous career that I’ve had. And I really loved running a business. I really enjoyed operating a business. The the licensing company I took it over in two thousand eleven. It was almost gosh, two hundred and fifty years old. I’m sorry, a hundred and fifty years old. Not older than this country. A hundred and fifty years old. and when I when I took it over in two thousand eleven, it was a real turnaround story. It had just been poorly managed for decades, but with some some exceptional luck and a great team, we were able to turn it around and become one of the most dynamic companies in the industry. And we ended up selling it in two thousand nineteen for a a just more than we had ever expected. And it was it was a lot of fun. Obviously, like any business, I I had a lot of sleepless nights. So that experience though, how does it help me now? You know, I walked in those shoes. I walked in the shoes of a business owner from from having those sleepless nights, being concerned about employees Being concerned about whether you’re making the right investments in the company. Sometimes thinking that maybe you went you were a little too out too much out over your skis and and being concerned and looking out for threats and looking out for opportunities. And then having the the opportunity to sell the business to a strategic buyer, the largest. privately owned music licensing company in the world ended up buying our company. So it was a tremendous experience, full of ups and downs. And when I work with business owners now, I have that that sympathy of actually having been there. I can I can relate to their their NATE COLLINStheir concerns because I know their challenges. I also know their opportunities. I know where business owners typically are not focused and spending enough time. And I know where they can do more to optimize the values of their business or the the value of their personal wealth. And it really is enjoyable because it’s my purpose. My purpose is to support business owners through all parts of their journey, their business journey from inception to exit. And it makes me feel it makes me feel really good to have that purpose. It makes me feel needed. It makes it me feel like I matter to people. And so, you know, my best days are any day I get to talk to my clients or a prospective client talking about their business, helping them solve problems, helping them create strategies that that achieve their goals. GAIL DOBYYou know, it’s really interesting. and and we’re going to dive into exit planning and thinking about how to prepare your business for sale. And as we start doing that, I’m approaching that because I’m thinking about that myself. And I know that a lot of our listeners are in the same boat. They’re thinking about what is that future and how long does it take to prepare your business for sale. So I’m definitely gonna go off the questions that I sent you and we’re gonna maybe go off on a tangent and talk about some things that are related to preparing for what is a very big moment in almost any owner’s life when they’ve worked for years building their business, and then it’s time to really think about that future. So talk to me a little bit about how you approach going through that process with somebody. Preparing them for this. NATE COLLINSSure, absolutely. Well, first, let me just share a little story. Earlier this year, in February, I slipped on some ice, fell down some steps, broke some bones in my back, got a concussion. and I couldn’t move for a couple weeks. Well, I when I say I couldn’t move, I meant I was I was laid up in bed for a couple of weeks. fortunately it was just some fractures and I didn’t need surgery or anything. But the one thing I could do was type. So I actually wrote the I wrote a book on exit planning. Actually it’s more of a workbook and it guides a business owner through basically all the important steps to consider when when you are planning to eventually exit your business. And this workbook is set up to to guide somebody through anywhere from say two years to five years. lead runway before the exit. ideally the more time the better, of course. And the key to having a successful exit, there are there are a number of keys, I guess, really. but let’s just start with the first one is really identifying three goals. Your personal goals, your business goals, And your financial goals. You know, when I say personal goals, what are you trying to accomplish out of selling your business? Why are you selling your business? Is it because you want more time with family? Is it because you’re just tired of the grind of doing the business? Really understanding that. And then thinking about are there other things to do? Are there other ways to solve those problems? Look, selling a business is really hard. Eighty percent of businesses that go to market fail to sell. So, and I hope that everybody here, everybody who’s listening, has an opportunity to sell their business someday because it’s an extraordinary experience and it leads to some great opportunities when you have that sort of wealth creating event. However, it is hard. So why are you selling your business? Right? But NATE COLLINSon from the personal side. And what are you what are you planning to do afterwards? And we can get into that later also. That’s a that’s a whole nother can of worms. from the business side, understand the goals. What do you want your who do you want to be the successor of your business? Who do you want to be the new custodian of this thing that you built, this child that you raised almost? obviously I can’t really compare a business to a child. nothing’s quite like that. But the amount of energy that a business owner puts into their business is substantial. And a lot of business owners would say, Yes, actually my business is like my third child, or my second wife, or you know, something yeah. So something like not exactly, but it’s it’s just they feel very passionate about it is I guess what I’m saying. And So who do you want to run that and what do you what do you see how do you see your team transitioning with that business and what’s important to you in that that legacy of this business that you built? Is it is it important that you get the highest amount of money for the sale? or is it important that the business continues And the name of the business continues and the team of the business continues. So we talked about personal, your personal goals, your business goals, and your financial goals. What is it that you’re looking to do, accomplish on a financial level when you are selling your business? Why are you selling your business? Are or how much do you need to accomplish the goals of your next chapter? Whether that next chapter is Is it starting a new business or retiring or something else? so you need to consider all three of those elements, the three legs of the stool, personal, business, financial, when you’re thinking about selling a business. GAIL DOBYit’s it’s complicated and I’ve actually had six of my clients go through exits and it has been a very interesting situation. I have one going through an exit right now and she’s she’s going I there’s a lot to it and I I really can’t divulge any of that here but it it has been an interesting process and as you go through this process and watch from the outside as an advisor to that client And you’re coaching them about their business and helping them really build it and get it to where it is a saleable business. that’s a whole different thing than the process of going through a sale. And the sale is definitely one of the most challenging things I’ve experienced with my clients going through that whole process. And one of the things I find so fascinating is how emotional that process is from so many aspects from how it affects your team to how it affects you as the owner of the business to how it affects the buyer of the business. how would you recommend that people prepare themselves for that piece? NATE COLLINSYeah, you know, I found that when I was going through my sale, I was poorly prepared and because I was poorly prepared from that for that transaction, I ended up really overreacting to a lot of things and being highly triggered. It was a very emotional and tense process and that that lasts for, you know, anywhere from three to nine months. And so having that problem. Preparation is important, and the best way to do that is by working with advisors who have been there because when you are selling a business, it’s probably most typically the first business that you’ve ever sold, and you probably are not gonna sell another one, and typically the person that you’re selling to. has bought businesses before. So they’ve already they already know how that game is played and they typically have good very good advisors who are advising them and know how to maximize or optimize the the their own value of the purchase. So the best thing you can do is be well prepared by investing in your team of advisors. And I call it investing in your team of advisors because the value that you get out of that investment will h will very likely be much more than the the investment that you made. Whether it is having a good MA advisor who can help create an auction process and drive up the interest in your business, help you market it. to having a good MA attorney who can protect you on the other who can protect you from liability after you sell your business and can actually have very efficient negotiations with the the buyer’s attorney on the on the sale document to perhaps you have a you’re doing a qualit a quality of earnings with a transaction accountant. NATE COLLINSwhich can turn out to be extremely valuable, then on the personal side, you want to have tax strategies. Invest in those tax strategies. That’s that was the big mistake I made. I didn’t have any financial plan, any tax strategies going into my business or going into the transaction, going into selling my business. And I ended up spending millions of dollars in taxes I could have had I could have avoided had I been properly prepared. And so invest in your team, invest early in your team, and you will reap the rewards, not only financially, but also just emotionally, because they will be able they will be there to support you and they will they will help you understand what is normal and how to approach the buyer when things may not be going the way that you expect. GAIL DOBYMm-hmm. Well, and I I would have to say just watching from the outside on these other transactions, it there was so much stuff that I I had not experienced before going through this with my clients. And i it was it was great because I learned a lot and when I get ready to exit my business somewhere down the road, then I’ll have a lot more data points about what to do and how to prepare better. But I I I love that you did this book and it’s unfortunate that you had to be laid up in bed to actually do the book, but tell me a little bit about it, what’s in there and some of the things that that you’d recommend that people pay cl very close attention to. NATE COLLINSgosh. So the book is really a culmination of the the my personal experiences and the lessons that I’ve learned working with dozens of entrepreneurs and executives as they have sold their business or their businesses. And I do a quarterly business exit planning workshop which kind of goes over those lessons and I break it down into what I call the five the five elements of a successful exit. And the five elements we’ve kind of touched on on one of them or two of them already. First is you know invest in your team of advisors. Make sure that you have a f a complete team of advisors. As I said, I was just missing one GAIL DOBYHmm. NATE COLLINSor two advisors. In fact, I actually had those advisors, but I didn’t have the right advisors. I didn’t have I had a financial advisor and I had a a tax accountant, but I didn’t have the right f type of financial advisor. Or and I didn’t really do a good job of talking to my tax accountant about the transaction before it happened. So that was on me. but so invest in your advisors, prepare for your next chapter, your your for the your post exit life. And I’m gonna I’m on I wanna come back to that in a second after I finish the these five. So advisors, post exit life, align your personal financial plan with your business plan. Thoroughly investigate the all the different types of buyers out there. So many times we think we know who’s gonna buy our business or who we wanna sell it to. But it’s a good idea to fully understand the pros and cons of selling to each type of buyer. And the the most important thing is understanding that what you want out of a transaction determines who you sell your business to. Not the other way around, not somebody coming and giving you an offer determining what you want out of that transaction. So ahead of time, think about your goals. It goes back to all your it always goes back to your goals. And then finally is optimizing the value of your of your business. And there are a number of ways to increase the attractiveness of your business to a buyer. and obviously one of them NATE COLLINSis by working with an MA advisor and and going through an auction process, but just internally, making sure that the business is not dependent upon you, the the business owner or the CEO of the company, making sure that you have I guess policies and procedures documented so that somebody else can step into your company and run the company. Making sure that your your account your books, your financial books and your legal, I guess all your all your important legal documents are complete and standardized. And there are a a number of other ones too. And all of those have an impact on on driving up the multiple of your of your business, the multiple of EBITDA that somebody’s willing to pay. For your business. And so now I want to take a second to go back to really why is thinking about your post-exit life so important to a sale? Why is that an essential element? And I do a lot of public speaking about this in particular. There is a there was a study in South Africa that followed CEOs. And found that after the these CEOs left their businesses, whether they were retiring or they were selling their businesses, these CEOs went into the this period which researchers call the liminal period, which is between I think that means between phases. And this period was marked by feelings of worthlessness, confusion, uncertainty, depression, regret. There is a study done by Price Waterhouse Coopers that found that seventy-five percent of business owners who sell their businesses profoundly regret the transaction just twelve months later. Wow. So right, and this is supposed to be a a seminal period, you know, an event, a life defining event for people that they should have great fond memories of, yet they regret it. GAIL DOBYOoh. NATE COLLINSAnd I was one of those people. A year after selling my business, or within a year, I regretted selling my business. And why is that? Well, I didn’t properly prepare for the next chapter. And so I I spent probably three or four years suffering from depression. I wouldn’t say it was clinical, but just I was not me. You know, I went I I I remember a f I went and saw a friend and the friend said, you know, Nate, you you sound like you have postpartum depression. And I did. I really you know. Yeah. Right. And and it’s not just business owners that go through this, it’s anybody who has a a significant change in their lives. Mothers, right, you know. or say you retire. or say you move, you probably have this this you may have this these feelings of you may be going through a liminal period as you reestablish your your new life, your new routines. But I was I was really suffering and it really impacted my identity because I always thought of myself as a very optimistic and energetic and I guess reliable person and and These feelings were were changing who I was. And and not only did my friends notice that, my family noticed that, my my two children noticed that, and that was not the ident the identity that I wanted. That’s not the the legacy that I wanted them to remember me by. So, you know, I I I looked around, you know, it’s funny, when I before I was settling my business, I really wanted for me, my goal was NATE COLLINSpersonal prosperity. I wanted when I sold my business, I was like, I want to make a lot of money because I grew up without money. I grew up in the woods, in in the cat skills, without electricity in a in a cabin. So, you know, finally having some level of wealth was very important to me. And so afterwards, because I was not happy, I wasn’t fulfilled, I thought, well maybe I just w was not wealthy enough. Maybe that was the big problem. And so I went and worked worked at the hedge fund that I told you about. And I still just I still didn’t feel fulfilled. And I went and had lunch with my my my business coach and he recognized that I was going through the liminal period and he said, Nate, listen I’m gonna share with you my framework for personal well being, post exit personal well being. And he said it’s three things. It is purpose, community, and health. Find your purpose, build your community, prioritize health. Now, health, right, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is like basic, right? That’s need to you cannot you cannot have any well-being without personal health. And so that’s mental and physical, and and there’s a lot that goes into health, especially mental health. And one of the things that goes into mental health is feeling secure about your finances. And I hadn’t done that, right? I told you I I didn’t have a financial plan. So, and I just didn’t know what not I didn’t know what having money in the bank meant. All I knew what having a paycheck meant. And that’s what happens to a lot of people who sell their businesses. It’s or retire. They say, Well, you know, I I I don’t really know what this means to have a lot of money in the bank in the bank, but I know what it means to be able to pay my bills with my NATE COLLINSWith my paycheck. so I had to sort that out. But then community. A lot of a lot of entrepreneurs, executives, a lot of people who’ve been in a business for a long time, their community are the people who are in the business or the the in that commun or in that industry. And I’ll tell you, when you sell your business, if you sell it on a Monday, Tuesday, nobody’s nobody’s calling you. you know. Maybe maybe you get some calls to say, hey, congratulations, but in general, a lot of those relationships, they just they they dissipate very quickly. And and so who is your new community after you sell your business? And then the third thing is is purpose. And purpose, a lot of people say, Well, go find your purpose, but I don’t think that’s actually I think you need to define it more and the way that I think about their purpose is purpose having a a sense of purpose comes when you feel like you are relevant to the lives of other people. When when the fact that you are in existence helps other people achieve whatever it is that they are trying to achieve. when you’re doing something that is bigger, you are there for something bigger than yourself. And, you know, that’s why you can’t just, you know, sell your business and then go play golf all the time, or sell your business and go sit on the beach, whatever it is. you have to you have to do something that helps improve the lives of other people. Now that could be, your purpose could be a non it could be charitable. You know, you don’t need to get paid for it. Or you could be doing something that provides an income for you. it could be working with people who don’t have any means and need financial support or need other things to to actually just basic things to live, or it could be just people who need knowledge and information. could need be people who need just support. NATE COLLINSThey need somebody to talk to. And and it could be less direct. It could be helping to improve the environment because that, or helping work in work in your local community because that helps improve the lives of other. Whatever it is, you will find purpose when you are doing something that benefits the lives of other other people’s lives. And I finally found that. After talking to my business coach, I realized that my I had been I had the wrong goals in life. My goal had been personal prosperity. And it’s no wonder that hadn’t led to personal fulfillment because it doesn’t. It was actually personal well-being that leads to fulfillment. When I finally created new goals that supported my ment my mental health, my my community or building my community and finding my purpose, that’s when that’s when I was able to come out of the liminal period. That’s when I found personal fulfillment. And that’s what brought me here to doing what I do today. As I said before, it’s my purpose. I love it. I love talking about it all the time. I love sharing my story. I mean if it can just help one person transition into their next chapter more easily without having to go through what I went through. It’s completely worth it. GAIL DOBYMm-hmm. That’s so great. Well, I it’s so important to have this conversation early, as you said, and two to five years out from the time you’re planning to exit. And it’s a fascinating process for each person to go through. And I I think about this because my husband’s been retired for eight years and he’s a happy clam. He is the happiest guy. And his purpose though is to take care of me. So it actually has worked out quite well for me because I am just one of those people that’s very driven by my purpose too and what I’m doing. So this has been a really interesting conversation and it has given me a lot of things to think about for myself as well. So I greatly appreciate you being here today. NATE COLLINSGail, what is your purpose? GAIL DOBYMy purpose is really to help other people build a business and a life that are meshed together that they love and have the freedom that they want to have in their lives, whether it be financial freedom or time freedom or both, they re they can have that. And to me that if I can help them do that, then that is I’ve achieved my goal with them. NATE COLLINSMm. That’s great. And you know, I think the key words were the first words that you said. My purpose is to help dot dot dot. Help or you know, my purpose is to help other people. And I think when you can say that, that’s or when you can say I help other people, that’s when you know you found your purpose. GAIL DOBYMm-hmm. Yeah, I it’s something that late in life I decided to start this business. I was 52 when I started it and much older now. And it’s been thank you. I wish it were true. But honestly, I think it’s been one of the most challenging and interesting and fun things that I’ve learned is that every day I get to learn, every day I get to help these people grow. and expand and not just themselves but their whole team and just helping companies understand what they need to do internally in their their companies to be ready to sell or be ready for all those other future things that they’re looking for, it has to be very intentionally done and it takes a lot of work. NATE COLLINSYeah. Yeah. That must feel it must feel great to to have a one of your clients go through and have a successful exit. GAIL DOBYYes, and I hope every one of them has exactly what they want out of it. So well, thank you so much for your time and for coming t today, Nate. And please tell us the name of your book so that we can have everybody go buy that if they’re getting ready to act. NATE COLLINSWell, it’s still a working title, so I don’t know what it is. but I I expect that I’ll be giving away more books than I will actually be selling. And what I would like to do is invite everybody just to send me an email if they’re interested in learning more. my email is Nate.collins at remondjames.com. You can also find me very easily on LinkedIn at NateCollins.com. Raymond James. and I invite everybody to join my ex business exit planning workshop. I do it on a quarterly basis. GAIL DOBYGreat. That is so great to hear. We’ll make sure and put that in the show notes. So thank you so much for being here today. NATE COLLINSThanks so much, Gail. It was a pleasure. GAIL DOBYSame here.

In this powerful and emotionally charged episode, Gail Doby reunites with former community member Susan Feffer to explore the intersection of business systems, personal crisis, and operational grit. Susan opens up about her childhood, where she discovered her natural gift for spatial design and human connection while navigating a traditional academic environment with an undiagnosed learning disability. Susan recounts how she rebuilt her life after a 2015 divorce, turning her hands-on experience in staging and house-flipping into a full-scale design firm. She shares why she decided to make her first major business investment with the Pearl Collective in February 2024, an operational “insurance policy” that proved vital just months later when a series of major health crises hit her small core team. In this episode, you’ll hear about: The Currency of Connection: How struggling in school taught Susan to use her social intelligence and relationship-building skills to survive and succeed. Shifting the Scarcity Mindset: Overcoming a conservative financial upbringing to realize that investing early in staff and structure is an act of betting on yourself. Preparing to Get “Unlucky”: How a four-month sprint of implementing freight policies and clear contracts allowed Susan’s business to keep running smoothly after her rare blood cancer diagnosis. Playing Hurt: The incredible cultural alignment that took place when Susan’s lead designer, Ashley, and her sister/operations manager, Patty, were also diagnosed with cancer. The Future Succession Plan: Susan’s ultimate goal of scaling back to the owner’s seat so her beloved team can eventually buy and run the firm. If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full show notes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s15e3-shownotes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV1wzPHLdhM&pp=ygUQcGVhcmwgY29sbGVjdGl2ZQ%3D%3D Episode Transcript Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors. Click to show transcript GAIL DOBYWell, Susan, it’s so great to see you. It’s been a while since we’ve gotten together and we are just we miss seeing your incredible smiling face. So thank you for being here. SUSAN FEFFERAnd thank you for having me. This is quite an honor. Very exciting. GAIL DOBYWell, it’s a pleasure. Well, I wanna start off. You have been a part of our community in the past and took a little break for a little while. You’ve had some things going on and we’ll get into that in a few minutes. But tell me about your journey of getting into interior design. Was that intentional? What happened in your life to get you here? SUSAN FEFFERSo as a little girl I loved design. I loved, you know, moving furniture around. I could play in doll houses for days and Fisher Price and Barbie, you know. it came really easily to me and I loved it. And I can’t say that a lot of other things came easy to me. So I had a mother that nurtured that and we would do the show houses and you know, she For when on my 16th birthday, I wanted Laura Ashley balloon curtains and I wanted a matching bedskirt and you know, comforter. And that’s, you know, I was always that girl. And so school was always a real struggle for me. I was not a great student. I was lived a life with an undiagnosed, you know, learning disability. And I was the youngest of five. So I sort of went where the carpool went. And During my, you know life as a child, as a student in a traditional environment, I learned I had to learn quickly how to survive and get through and identify who was gonna help me get there. So there was no blueprint, there was no rule you know, template to say this is what you’re supposed to do. I just had to figure it out and I had to find a solution. And there was a bit of chaos and sense of urgency with that. But I did it. And I would find that, you know, there’s Molly, and she’s in the second row, and she’s got her kilt to her knees, and she’s super quiet. So I’m gonna ask Molly for her notes, and then I’m gonna ask her to tutor me. And my mom’s gonna pick up her notebook, and you know, and then in return, I would ask Molly. To go to the party on Saturday night. You know, that was my currency. Like that came easy to me. Social things came easy to me. People that was easy, you know, but school was really hard. And I look back now, and it was actually the greatest thing that happened to me because what you know, I feel like it was so hard, and God was like giving this to me, but at the same time, like. SUSAN FEFFERThis was the greatest gift because I was able to touch into, tap into a part of me that found my strength and it found my strength in the struggle. It found that I was great at connecting people. I was able to figure out how to get through without like on my own. so anyway, I went to design school after high school. That was also a disaster because I was an interior design major and a textile design major. I’m 54, so this was a very long time ago. And why I was at college, they were teaching us CAD on DOS, you know, and that was like brutal for me. I mean, brutal. So, like again, I was like a failure and I wasn’t gonna like this wasn’t gonna cut it. And then I remember my teacher being like, you know, my CAD teacher, like, you’re not gonna be an interior designer. Like this is never gonna work. Like you can’t do this. And it was too hard to no one was getting there was no notes to get. There was nothing to Xerox. There was, you know, no one that even wanted to come to the party. They were a different breed of people. So it was like okay. So I ended up like transferring and through the night school I got into Villanova great school and I, you know, just kind of got through school. thank God I got through by the skin of my teeth. And then I pursued a sales and marketing career. And then I went to New York and Boston and and that was what I was supposed to do because I was good at that, right? Like I loved relationships. I loved finding like win-win situations and I genuinely love people. But I never really gave up on the design thing. I felt like the dream, I got into real estate. And I should fat go back a little bit. When I was in college at Villanova, I knew design wasn’t gonna work. Interior design, I didn’t think I’d gonna make it. So I got a part-time job at a real estate company, answering phones and booking their appointments. And I wanted this job because this was before the internet and all that kind of stuff. SUSAN FEFFERCause then I’d have the inside scoop on where the beautiful, like, like the open houses at the big mansions would be. So I would have like, you know, I would I would go on Sundays to these open houses and I would like throw on my mom’s mink coat and, you know, just show up. I didn’t have a I didn’t have two nickels scrubbed together and I’d just wanted to see how they were decorated and designed and I wanted to see their bathrooms and their kitchens. And and then I would tell the real estate agent. Like, I’ll be back with my fiance, you know. And they’re probably like, who is this girl? You know what I mean? Like it just crazy. so anyway, after sales and marketing, business, journey dabbled with real estate, I took a break and was a stay-at-home mom at 30. but I was flipping our own houses and, you know, staging houses for realtors. So in 2015, when my life sort of fell apart through divorce and I had to just start all over, that’s when I started my business. GAIL DOBYWow, that is quite the journey to get to here. So a lot of no’s, a lot of frustrations getting to this point, but it seems as if it was what was meant to be for you. Was that a shock to you once because you were SUSAN FEFFERI think as you get older, like I think as you get older, and then like the more struggles that you have, the more setbacks, the more, you know, loss or heartbreak or you know, whatever it is, it’s gonna look different for everybody. But I think you get better at handling the hard stuff and you know what what you can keep if you can keep moving forward and pivoting. And healing and learning from your mistakes or your setbacks and putting you in a position of growth and a path forward, you you realize that all of those things were put in front of you to get you where you are today, right? So I’m such a big believer in that. So I I can’t always say that I thought that. And I’ve certainly been the girl on the bathroom floor, you know, paralyzed in fear and and and and scared and Anxious and you know, but I think the more times you go through it, the more you realize on the other side of that door, that bathroom door is like God and grace and gratitude, you know, because all those moments are setting us up for where we are today, you know? Sure. A little deep, but so I don’t think my my design path was conventional. I don’t think anyone’s listening to this thing. yeah, me too. I didn’t I didn’t feel worthy. You know, I felt like I I wasn’t able to do this because of that professor telling me like I’m never gonna be an interior designer and going to a power weaving class and thinking that textile design was gonna be my thing and realizing I hate this. This is science. Like this isn’t fun. Like this is hard, you know? so I gave up on that. But I was always trying to find a way, an angle that I could still use it because I realized that’s where my that I was good at it. Whether anybody wanted to tell me or not, I knew it. So I can’t say that it knocked my confidence because I think, you know, I’m incredibly humbled and life’s humbled me a tremendous amount. But I was fortunate enough to have like. SUSAN FEFFERyou know, parents that didn’t put a tremendous amount of pressure on the things that I wasn’t good at. They were just like, you know, get by, you know, get through it. Like, you’re great. You’re fun. You’re, you know, like people like you. And like, let’s focus on that. So I never let it get me too down. You know, I didn’t let it be the victim of it. I I wanted to be the victor someday with it. I just didn’t know how it was gonna present itself, you know. GAIL DOBYSure. So is that what you’ve achieved to date that you didn’t think you would? Is just getting into design or what do you think SUSAN FEFFERI think when you step away from just the work, you know, world to raise your kids and that’s a that’s a great sacrifice. Mm-hmm. And I don’t I don’t I’m not one to look back and say I shouldn’t have done that, but I I wish I stayed with something because when you leave your marriage and you go through such a tremendous, you know, devastating loss of your the way your life was supposed to be, you know. It’s a vulnerable spot not to have something you can attach yourself to and a way that you can provide for yourself. So I was in a flight or fight or flight, you know, state for a very long time, you know, like during my separation and my divorce, trying to take care of my two kids, build a business, you know. I had to take I had to be very lean and take calculated risks. So, you know. Where I am now, I I I never dreamed that I’d have a, you know, team of five or that I’d be financially free and independent of anybody, you know? And how could I ever ask for anything more? You know, being that girl on the bathroom floor, like, dear God, get me through this, like not even knowing what you’re worth was. and there’s a lot of people that carried me, you know, there I have amazing friends and I have an i an an incredible family and those y i all of it, they all kind of aligned and helped me. so yeah, I might chat am I babbling too much. GAIL DOBYNo, not at all. I mean, you’re being very vulnerable and open, which I think everyone is gonna be able to relate to. And I I love that you are you’re so self aware and you also know that you can succeed no matter what anybody tells you. And my gosh, I would love to go just slap that professor’s face. Seriously. If it this is what you SUSAN FEFFERYou know, it’s so interesting in today in 2026 and even raising two kids, like school’s different now. You know, it’s always like it’s fine, what’s working for your child. It’s not a one size fits all, right? Like and had I had those kid gloves on me or you know, protecting me from that, maybe I wouldn’t have come out the way I am. Maybe I wouldn’t be so gritty and persistent and resourceful. You know, that could have been my greatest blessing, you know, was my, you know, hardest struggle. So, you know, school was one thing. I mean, I’ve certainly had other struggles in the past, but also a lot of wins and I’ve been blessed with a lot of great things as well. So yeah. GAIL DOBYI think it’s interesting you talked about being gritty and of course grit makes pearls and it’s Pearl Collective. It’s our podcast. And so for us, we know that in order for us to be strong and resilient, we have to have grit. We have to be have the willingness to go through the hard stuff because that’s really what where we learn the most. It’s not the things that are easy. So you’ve had your share of that. SUSAN FEFFERWell, yeah, and I think also being a solopreneur, you know, for a while, like that’s lonely and isolating. I don’t even know. People say, like, I if my back wasn’t against the wall, I don’t know if I’d ever know what I was really made of, you know. if I had the luxury to say, Okay, if I don’t do this, my bills are still getting paid, you know, like that my husband’s gonna take care of me and the house, the mortgage is gonna be you know, like if I had that. GAIL DOBYHerr Mobile Online. SUSAN FEFFERI don’t know if I would have kept pushing. It was so hard, you know? It was really hard. But maybe that’s why it feels so good now. Right? GAIL DOBYYou deserve it. You deserve it. So think about the future too. What is the big career goal that you haven’t achieved yet that is maybe in the back of your mind? SUSAN FEFFERYou know, I would love to sit more in the owner’s seat someday and have my business run a hundred percent without me. You know? I’ve never been a promoter. I mean, guys, you could look at myself social media, like it’s I mean my girls think I’m it’s it’s it’s a negative. I always kind of built my business on intention rather than attention. Like I needed to know that I the most important thing. Was that my clients are taken care of and that they’re happy. You know, so what other people see, you know, doesn’t matter. You know, I I just have to know that they’re good and my I will continue to get business if they’re okay, you know, and that is it’s a word of mouth thing. so where wanna be is just keep going and I would like to maybe have a design studio on the Eastern Shore. That’s where I have my St. Michael’s house and have a DC studio. but really like develop my girls who I like, they’re my family, to the point where they have people working for them so that they could eventually buy this and I could work for them. You know, some someday that there’s some kind of succession plan. Because this is real and it it it’s viable and it’s it’s a it’s a great place to be, you know. I mean, not just ’cause of me, because of the the people that are around me, you know, and the the so the people we allow in our lives, our clients, everything. so that’s good. GAIL DOBYYeah. Well, I remember us having this conversation about a year ago, and I remember you were just so surprised at how well you had done and how much you had grown and the things you’d accomplished. And I I wasn’t surprised. It was more of I was surprised that it didn’t really register with you how successful you’d become. And that was so interesting. SUSAN FEFFERWell, I think that it’s a mindset thing, right? I think there was the years of building your business as a solopreneur. And I also think I was coming from a place with a scarcity mentality. I was surviving. I was raised by an amazing parents that were amazing, and I had a father that was very conservative. Like you get a credit card, you pay it off, you you don’t buy, you don’t rent, you buy, you You know, if you’re gonna spend ten dollars, you put the other 20 in the bank, you know. So all of a sudden, when you’re faced with like a business and you’re trying to grow a business and not hiring and doing everything by yourself, like that’s the one thing I would have changed. I would have done more investment in myself and my business earlier. I would have hired people earlier and taken that mindset from a scarcity to knowing that if I invest properly. I’m sort of I’m betting I’m betting on myself. And that’s that’s that’s gonna be okay. So that was that was really hard for me. And your Pearl Collective, other than maybe some investment in photography, and actually at that point when I joined Pearl Collective, it was February of 2024. And I realized I listened to a podcast that had you on it. We were featured on it. And then I was like, I gotta look into this Gail Adobe lady. Like, this could be exactly what I need, right? And because surrounding me, I had my sister that was working for me part-time. I had one of my closest friends that was, you know, helping with interior design. And then I had Ashley. So I had Nicole and Ashley and Patty, and Ashley’s another designer, and I had this amazing team. I had great clients, and I was like, We’re kind of a mess, you know, and I owe that to you. I it was almost like I looked at my team and I thought, I gotta button this thing up. I gotta, I’ve got some great people and I’m gonna invest in this program because I’m ready and I know that this is gonna, you know, be a good investment. I just knew it. Because I needed the tools. And so I did it. SUSAN FEFFERAnd it was great. And I hit the ground running and I went through my VIP in February. And, you know, I come back like a crazy lady, you know, like implementing all these things. And they’re like, no, you know, here she is with the binder. gosh, you know, like, what are we gonna do today? You know? And I mean, I’m like, it was just fast and furious, you know, like this was my first big investment. So I was like gonna get my money out of it. And, you know I I said to you, I remember saying I did this because I was like, we’re in a place that it’s viable. We’ve got a great team and great clients, but we need to put ourselves in a position where and prepare to get lucky. So when we get the big one, we’re we’re good to go. Like we have these systems and processes in place. And so what I did not realize what was that by investing and going through the program and starting, you know, with you guys was I was preparing to get unlucky, which is kind of crazy. Wow. So that probably February, March, April, April, May, I started, you know, having some health scares. I was like really freaking out. Like I had like bruises all over my body and I was exhausted. And, you know, I was going from doctor to doctor in emergency rooms. And anyway, in July of 2024, I was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer. Which was frightening at the time. because I was alone. Like my business, w the things that you think about, like when someone tells you that, like at that place, that that point in my life, at that day, I was like, my gosh, like I pay for my healthcare, you know, like I can’t afford to go down, you know, like this thing needs to keep going because, you know, I don’t have a safety net. And you know, those things, it was like, you know, like the real I wasn’t like, my gosh, I’m gonna die. And I’m so sad. I was like, I gotta, I, I wasn’t like, I’m gonna sit back on the couch. I was like, I gotta, I gotta ramp it up, you know, like I realized then, like, do my girls or my my team, like, do they know where the retainer money is? You know, people are giving you large sums of money. Like, I was just dealing with. SUSAN FEFFERYou know, like what happens if I get sick and, you know, like go down? Like where we we are a a professional business, you know. So I needed to make sure all those things were in place, you know. because, you know, I had great, you know, clients that I needed to continue working with them. I didn’t want them to pull up the business and say Susan’s sick, you know, like I needed them to realize that other people were you know, behind the scenes doing the work. So anyway, I remember being really sick and not coming into work and, you know, and then coming it back. And it was crazy. My girls just lined up and they were like, this got done, this got done, this got done. Like they were going through the binder. Like they were, you know, here’s our new freight management policy. It’s in the contract. And here’s, you know, we Patty was like, we contacted this insurance carrier. And we it was like, You know, we’re doing this new policy, you know, for our client, and we’re in touch with him and we’re good. And I was like, my God, like this is incredible. you know, and that was four months, four months of just little shifts that I made in the business through learning from Pearl Collective that put me in a position to succeed during a hard time. And And then it also was just kind of like a kind of a rule book or you know, just like it gave it gave my team something to work from. so anyway, that was crazy. And then we got through it and thank God I am doing great and my prognosis is great and you know, I go through treatment every two weeks and I should live forever and I feel incredibly blessed. But, you know, it it’s still cancer. And it’s a big wake-up call. And it’s also an incredible motivator and it can be a gift because you look at every day and think like you’re just not gonna sp you know what I mean? Like it’s just this is a good day. Like, you know, look around me. I have so much gratitude. So fast forward, about six months after that, Ashley, my lead designer, was sitting here and got the call. SUSAN FEFFERFrom her doctor, while we were all together, that she was diagnosed with breast cancer. And, you know, having been on the other side and saw the love and the support and the, you know, your your vibe is your tribe and your try, you know, like we got this. Like they showed up for me in a way like unbelievable. So I was like, I got you. Like we’re gonna get through this together, you know? And you take off as much time as you want, you know, you need for having a you know, a good day, want us all to pack up and come to your house, we will. Like you need to bring the baby here. Like we’ll figure it out. Like you’re gonna come back and you whenever you can, you’re welcome, you know? And no one’s gonna replace you. And you know, we got virtual assistance and figure that part out. And we got through Ashley and Then my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer once as she was as she came out of chemo and she came back from radiation and she was like, then my sister. And you know, so now we’re like, okay, like we got you, you know? And crazy, like how do three people and they’re all different cancers, so I don’t think it’s like Silkwood in the, you know, office, you know, or we’re living, you know. civil war kind of mind whatever like with all this radiation. So it was just crazy. Like there’s no handbook that tells you how to navigate this. And but but what what we had was it was just our culture. Like something that we we had and like no one taught us that. Like maybe I’m just good at hiring. Maybe I understand talent. Like Maybe that’s my secret thing, but you know, it’s leading by example, it’s doing the right thing, it’s showing up for our clients, it’s showing up for each other. It’s, you know, we play hurt, we’re gonna get it done, like nothing, we’re not gonna miss a beat. And we didn’t, and our revenues grew to crazy numbers, and our business doubled, maybe more, why we were playing hurt. SUSAN FEFFERwhy we were w always one man down, why we were probably our systems and processes weren’t great because someone was covering for somebody else. And, you know, we couldn’t bring on more business because we didn’t know if how we could service it. So we just had a, you know, we never marketed. It was just our existing business, our existing clients would come back. And that was a bit that’s a bit of lightning in the bottle. I’m not gonna like Rely on that anymore. But, you know, it’s just, it’s just where we are at this stage of our business. So Ashley’s back and Patty just started her second round of chemo. Patty’s my sister, and she does the business operations and she’s awesome. you know, so you just I think it just the more stuff you go through, the more stuff you realize you’re gonna get through. You know, like you got this, you’ll figure it out. And it was maybe that girl. that sat in that classroom or, you know, in the in the in the computer lab or whatever it was what I I wasn’t good at. I I was good at something else, you know, and I was good at developing people or find or, you know, just finding the right clients or creating win wins or, you know, those kind of things. that design school doesn’t teach you, or neither does any kind of school. Because I was so bad at something else. so that’s that. GAIL DOBYThat is so amazing. And you’re not the only one that has gone through severe health issues. We’ve I I can’t even tell you how many clients have gone through life threatening illnesses or cancer or you name it. It’s just been unreal how many of our clients have been impacted. But the thing that I’m so glad to hear is that you also were able to keep going as did they because they had the things in place and your team could go look at the binder for a VIP and just go execute and do those things. That is so cool. I did not know all that SUSAN FEFFERAnd my heart breaks for people. It’s almost like I feel unqualified sometimes. You know, it’s like, ’cause I’m doing so well, right? Like that I I know it. But it also gives compassion for you don’t know what people go through, right? Like everyone’s journey is so different. but we do get to choose what we take from that, our our hardships and and how we move forward. And I look at all of them as a gift, you know. I mean, had I not gone through a lot of this stuff, maybe I’d be a jerk, you know, like maybe I wouldn’t be like so down to earth, like I’d be snotty. I’d think like, you know, the world owed me something. Like, I don’t know, right? Like I’m so much more interesting, I think, and as is everybody, you know, for their story. I love the power of the human spirit. And that is something that inspires me from for every every everyone’s story I take a little bit of something from. so yeah. GAIL DOBYWell, Susan, this has been amazing. I didn’t know all the things we’d talk about today, but it just flowed so easily. And I’m just so happy for you for all the success you have earned. You’ve earned it.

In this soul-stirring episode, Gail Doby welcomes long-term collaborator and peer Lisa Kahn back to the podcast to look at the cartography of a 12-year professional relationship. Lisa reflects on her multi-generational roots in design, her early days as an in-house designer for Lutron Electronics, and the critical moment she hit deep-seated burnout. The heart of the episode explores the anatomy of a business turnaround. Lisa shares an unforgettable strategy from 2009 when, staring down a zero-cash payroll nightmare and a dropped design deposit, she used her credit card to buy 50 blank notes. By writing unprompted, radical “love letters” of gratitude to 50 critical mentors and allies, she completely shifted her financial energy current—resulting in a $3 million influx of business in under 60 days without asking for a single project. Furthermore, Lisa and Gail lean into a beautiful, vulnerable space regarding their concurrent work on trauma processing, addressing the dark shadows, and moving beyond the exhausting habits of people-pleasing and self-protection. In this episode, you’ll hear about: The Academic Rejection: Why Lisa initially explored transitioning to design education, only to realize the traditional structure of academia couldn’t contain her vision. Rethinking How We Work: Gail’s pivotal advice to Lisa that it wasn’t the interior design profession burning her out, but the structural architecture of how she was executing her business. Sanctuary as a Tool for Resilience: Moving past the superficiality of aesthetics to design rooms that physically cradle the human nervous system through ritual, incense, and sound. A Survivor’s Light: Lisa opens up about coming to terms with surviving past domestic violence, and how she translates that survival into a profound message of healing through physical environments. The Neuroscience of Aesthetics: Lisa’s current academic obsession with neuroaesthetics, sacred geometry, and Harvard’s 85-year landmark study on human connection. The Barn at Sanctuary Naples: A breakdown of Lisa’s incoming 5-acre Florida headquarters, detailing workshop spaces, content studios, an outdoor music amphitheater, and immersive live learning retreats. Lisa has been a guest on the podcast before. Listen back to her previous episode, “Grow As You Go or No?”, here. If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full show notes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s15e2-shownotes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFhmiZdHZWw Episode Transcript Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors. Click to show transcript GAIL DOBYWelcome to the Creative Genius Podcast. Lisa, this is number three for us. We’ve done two others before. Yes. LISA KAHNI have loved both, so honored to be back. GAIL DOBYIt’s great to have you back. And it’s so interesting ’cause I looked back at your records to see when you and I met and it was January twentieth, two thousand fourteen. LISA KAHNHow about that? It’s been a hot minute. GAIL DOBYA hot minute. Hot 12 minutes. Twelve more minutes. Yeah. Well, I thought we would just kind of meander down a path today. So we’ll see where this path takes us. And I’d love for you to just take it where you’d like to. So let’s start first with how you got into design. LISA KAHNYeah. LISA KAHNWell, I actually originally got into design because honestly, I grew up in a family business and my mom is and was a designer. And so, you know, it was a very natural thing for me to do. you know, design was very much part of my household. You know, it was what I did on spring breaks, it was what I did on summer vacations, you know, we really all worked as a family. there were three kids in my family. And so all five of us would climb in the car during summers and drive to the business and all work there because it was also a retail store and be involved with all of that. So yeah, it was just a very natural thing for me to do. It was not actually what I thought I wanted to do. You know, my mom said to me, Lisa, you’ve got a knack for this. You really should follow design and do it. And I’m like, no way. You know, this was in Northwest Ohio. Everything was on such tight budgets and everything was At that point, you know, this was a long time ago. So Waverly was a division of Schumacher and they put out these wallpaper books that had like 12 things that all matched with borders and fabrics and everything. And that’s what you did for everybody. And I just thought to myself, if I have to be working out of these Waverly books for the rest of my life, I just don’t think I have the fortitude. but you know, I just hadn’t really been exposed. And so when I went to college and ended up changing my major from business to design, because I just realized at some point that I really needed that hands-on creative outlet every single day. it really my life went in directions. I couldn’t have imagined, you know, I ended up taking a job for Lutron Electronics as their corporate interior designer right out of school, which took me away from Ohio to Pennsylvania. And then I got married there and, you know, ended up moving to Florida and really getting into design then. And that was when I really saw. what design could be, because when you have bigger budgets, bigger projects, you know, bigger contacts, there is a world out there that I just had no exposure to. And that’s when I really fell in love with our profession. It really is just truly what I’m meant to be doing. GAIL DOBYIt’s a natural for you. I look at all of your board behind, all the inspiration, all the things you have behind you. And it I just look at how and I just think about how it connects to all the projects I’ve seen of yours and yeah that through line that you have of the peaceful, the serenity, the all the things that are so important to you. So it’s really cool to see that ’cause that is authentically you. And I know you and I’ve had a few conversations about being authentic to your brand, right? LISA KAHNExactly. Pivotal one scale. Life changing. Yes. GAIL DOBYWell, it was better than the day when you said this was like what was a near death experience? LISA KAHNExactly. my gosh. GAIL DOBYThat kinda. LISA KAHNSo good. It does. You know, Gail, you have helped me transform my life more than once. So I have to thank you for that. GAIL DOBYWell, I I hope it’s in a positive way. gosh. So all right. So you went to Lutron, you got married, you moved to Florida, you had kids, you found that this was your passion. This is all great. It’s wonderful. And then what happened? LISA KAHNyou know it is LISA KAHNYou know, and then after I had done a bunch of amazing projects, we had really, you know, grown the firm, I just found myself really burned out. and I couldn’t figure out why. I just really thought I fell out of love with design. I thought that I didn’t want to do this anymore. I explored all kinds of things. I explored what would happen if I became a sales rep. I’ve known lots of designers who’ve gone and done that. I looked at what would happen if I left the field of actually designing and went into education because I love teaching and I love young people and I would love to inspire, you know, the next generation of designers. But when I looked into that and met with one of the universities, I realized that, you know, I don’t know that the world of academia is quite ready for LisaCon. So that was not really a great fit. And the more that I looked around, I just felt like I was thwarted at every turn. And it was actually around that time that one of my design colleagues recommended that I call you. And so you and I had a conversation. You were on the way somewhere. I don’t remember what it was. You were doing something amazing, I’m sure. And as I was telling you how burned out I was and how I was just really thinking about how I could move into a different sector of the industry and what else I could do, you suggested really something that changed my life in that moment. And you said, you know, I don’t. actually think it’s the industry that’s burning you out, Lisa. I think it’s the way you’re working in the industry. And that really caught me up short. And I thought, what on earth could she mean? But yet it resonated with me. And I at that point, you know, scheduled a time for us to get together and really delve into my business because I realized that you really could be right. And I had never had anybody really look into you know, the nooks and crannies of my business, look at the way that I was working, building my team, you know, structuring things. I had just never had anyone do that before. And so working at that with you, I realized you were right. And I really was the way that I was working. And so by making some changes, by making some strategic hires, by reworking the way I spent my time and the things that I was focusing on, delegating things that really were not my joy. LISA KAHNreally allowing other people to have the freedom to do their job and really perform for me and not being micromanaging was another one. I mean, there were just so many things that I was doing that were really making me be unhappy. And it really wasn’t the actual design itself. And truly leaving it, I think I would miss it even today. GAIL DOBYThat’s so good to hear because we have of course known each other for a very long time. And I’ve seen you go through a lot of ups and downs with this. And even yeah after that time you had some other ups and downs. And why don’t you share one or two of those that were pivotal for you in in terms of really understanding who you were and maybe how you were in the business? LISA KAHNYou know, I think that we have been through all kinds of ups and downs. I mean, we’ve just been through ups and downs within the last few months. I think it’s really part of being a an entrepreneur. It’s part of owning a business. And what’s so interesting to me is I feel like when we start businesses and we’re we’re young, we’re hungry, we have all these big ideas, these dreams, we have absolutely no idea what we’re in for, in truth. And as designers, no one truly teaches us unless we get a business degree. how to read financials, how to hire people, how to structure contracts, how to negotiate. Nobody teaches us how to market. Nobody teaches us how to really build systems that allow us to visualize our work and have our teams be productive and everybody, you know, working together with a really good solid culture. And that is something that really has helped me weather the storms is having a contact like you. and like some of my other design colleagues that I call on, you know, when times are hard and I need guidance and advice and, you know, other suggestions and points of view. but when I think about just for example, I remember back in you know, this is maybe mid, you know, like 2009, 2010. This is even before I met you, I was going through a time of a cash crunch that was so profound I wasn’t even sure how I was gonna make my next payroll. It was just one of those times I was laying awake. At night I was just sick with worry about all of it. I was looking at my account balance going down. And you know, one of my clients fired us and we had to return, you know, a big design deposit. And as I was living through that time, and I thought to myself, what is the opposite of how I’m feeling right now? Like I’m just feeling so full of fear and anxiety and unhappiness. What is the opposite of that? And I decided at the time it was gratitude. And so what might that look like? And how could I express some gratitude and would that help me turn things around? And it’s funny because I took my credit card, because very little cash at the moment, and I went and I bought 50 cards at the local store blank cards, and I made a list of 50 people that had really impacted me over the last year. And I just really thought about that. I stepped out of that place of fear and I thought, all right, what what do I appreciate about this person? LISA KAHNI didn’t ask for anything, and I just wrote each one of them a note, a thank you love note, a little love letter. And this is why I love you. Thank you for everything that you’ve done for me. You know, know that you are on my heart, and if you ever need me, call on me. And I started sending these notes. I decided I would send them all out by like the middle of November. And as I was writing them, I will tell you that in the beginning I did not feel thankful. I didn’t, I didn’t feel gratitude, even to the people that I was writing to, because I was so still kind of caught up. And it’s funny though, because as I mailed the first few, and then I wrote a few more, and then I wrote a few more. You know, I started feeling my spirit lift. Like I just felt like, you know, I really am grateful for all these people. And so the last ones I wrote with such joy in my heart. And what’s funny is that by the time I had them all sent out, I heard back from every single person. I did. I got calls, I got flowers. GAIL DOBYWow. LISA KAHNIt was great. I got emails, I got messages back, I got texts, and it was just so incredible. And what’s amazing is so that was mid November, without asking for anything, by January third, I had booked three million dollars worth of business. GAIL DOBYOof. Wow. LISA KAHNGratitude is so powerful. And so when you ask about, you know, some of those times that we go through that are turbulent, that, you know, times are really down, that we feel really unhappy, or, you know, we’re going through these shifts, how do we get out of them? You know, that was one way that I did. And, you know, there have been all kinds of other ways that I have. And what’s funny to me about one of my more recent periods of turbulence that I’ve gone through just in the past few months, is that You know, we have this philosophy of creating spaces of sanctuary. And you know this is very personal to me. You know that I began this by creating spaces of sanctuary for my own family. And so my own personal sanctuary, which I’m sitting in right now, you are here live with me, has really developed over the years. You know, it’s been probably, I don’t know, 14, 16 years that I really have been working on this space and evolving it. And evolving what I do here, evolving how I perceive it, evolving the rituals and the daily practices, you know, the philosophy that has really emerged from all of it. And so when I went through my most recent turbulent time, and you feel that very despondent, dark feeling, you think, I’ve never felt this bad. No one’s ever gone through this before. And I came home, and even though I didn’t feel it, again, I didn’t feel like doing it, I did the things that make me feel better. I grabbed my journal. Did I feel like writing? No, but I did. It’s like a muscle, right? You exercise these muscles. I lit the candles, I put on the soft music, I put in a little stick of incense, I did all of the things that help me go from up here to down here. And you know what’s funny? It still works like a charm. And because I have evolved this space so beautifully to fit every single thing that cradles me, my body, my spirit, my energy. It picked me up almost immediately. I did not stay down, you know, at previous times when I’ve gone through these darker periods, sometimes it’s weeks as I cycle through these things and I work through it and I process what’s going on. But now with the support system that I’ve built for myself, it really happens much, much more quickly. And I find myself being so much more resilient. I can bounce back, I can respond, and I can sometimes it feels to me like I climb a ladder, right? I get LISA KAHNoff of the ground level where the planes are taking off and I climb the ladder, climb it, climb it, and I’m up at 30,000 feet. And all of a sudden I can see and it’s such a different way of looking at whatever it is that’s bothering me, whatever it is that set me off, whatever it is that caused the turbulence. Because from 30,000 feet, you know, these things are quite small. And you’re able to see them in relation to all of the other things in the landscape of your life. So that has also been just really remarkable to me. And I love it because while Sanctuary is certainly a beautiful space, it always will be for me. It’s so much more than that. And it really, instead of growing out of a place of beauty and happiness, it really has grown out of a place of turmoil and sometimes terror. And it’s grown out of frustration and it’s grown out of fear and all of those things, you know, the nexus of that coming out of such, I don’t know. Things that are hard, right? Things that are tough. I just think that it’s beautiful how something can bloom out of that. It reminds me of the plants and flowers that grow out of the rocks. GAIL DOBYI think that’s so well said and it’s so interesting. I’ve been doing some really deep work and we’ll chat about that more later, but LISA KAHNI look forward to that. GAIL DOBYThere’s something called motivational cartography, which is really understanding what’s deep within somebody’s soul. And that’s one of those things as I’ve been doing some really deep work lately that I found out that I just have this natural thing that makes me understand where people have come from, which is kind of why I wanted to talk about this timeline for you over this past 12 years that we’ve known each other. Because to me we do have this cartography of our lives. And I I do believe that the things that are the hardest that cause us to have to pivot, that cause us to have to think about what our real motivations in life are. Yeah. That’s what really drives the growth and the change. And I think in ultimately the satisfaction because it’s not a peaceful, easy journey to joy or to realization of comfort. LISA KAHNOr beaning. GAIL DOBYIt all comes from the struggle and you have to go through that rocky bumpy period in order for you to get there. So you shared one of those and you had the divorce and all of that, but you’ve had a lot of those over the last 12 years. And if you were to just go back through and pick a few of those that were the most impactful, what were the big key lessons you got? What was it that happened and what if you care to share and what was the biggest lesson you got from that? LISA KAHNwell, you know that one of the hardest was when I was getting divorced and when my daughter started having seizures. And it just, you know, I also lost an employee. Like there’s just so much happening all at one time. And when all of those things lined up, you know, that is when the word sanctuary came to me. And I just really realized You know, actually with your help, that this was a great direction to really take my business as well, because it really folds into such a beautiful design philosophy, and it really is what I truly value and believe. So an expression, you know, of my authentic self. And that is probably one of the most remarkable things that came out of a period of really deep and dark struggle. you know, more recently. just kind of going back to those past few months, and we can pick a few in between as well if you still like, but you know, r really realizing and remembering through a little traumatic event that happened in my family that I am a survivor of domestic violence and I didn’t realize that before. So sorry. GAIL DOBYYeah. LISA KAHNLooking at how these things have teed me up to be exactly the person I am today. And so ready to shine a light for, I mean, how many other women are out there who have survived domestic violence more than we would like to count? And when I think about how the message that I have for them of how our spaces can truly support us and help us heal, help us find our center, that’s beautiful. GAIL DOBYMm-hmm. LISA KAHNReally, really beautiful. So that one is a still a little tender, still a little emotional. and I’m sifting through all of that, but it’s also been I actually wouldn’t change that part of me because I know that I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you today, and I know that I wouldn’t be doing some of the other exciting things that you know are going on in my life had I not had the push, the uncomfortableness. I had to sit in that uncomfortableness, I had to go back and process. you know, things that I had buried for self-preservation, honestly, to get me through a period of time. But now it was time to resurrect them. You know, it was time to go back and reprocess a lot of old memories and a lot of old traumas that had happened so that I can incorporate them into the person that I am now, you know, so that I can bring, you know, those shadows into the sun. You know, how do we do that? And so that’s been an interesting journey for me. And as you have Mentioned that you have been doing some deep work, me too. And it hasn’t been easy, but it has been important and it has been impactful. And I have been through probably a year that will I feel stronger now than I’ve ever felt. I feel more empowered now than I have ever felt. And I feel more that I really don’t need anyone else’s permission. To do the things that I want to do and a sense of urgency to do them. Like if not now, when? If not me, then who? So that is a really great place to be in and to really gather about me my own mantle of agency, you know, my own sense of yes, I can do this and knowing that I can. And when I look back, you know, at the many, many, many events that have been so hard and transformational. I really can rest in the assurance that the resources that I need to sort things out, no matter what life lobs at me next, I will find them. I am certain that I will find them. So, you know, assurance, resilience, these are the kind of things that have really arrived for me out of some of the hardest times that I have faced. GAIL DOBYMm-hmm. Yeah. And I I don’t think any of us will have the courage to go I mean, you wouldn’t choose these things to happen to you. Yeah. But when you look back in the rearview mirror, you can say, if that had not happened for me, I would not be who I am today and where I’m going today would not be the case. Yeah. You make different choices. Yeah. LISA KAHNExactly. GAIL DOBYAnd you mean I I’ve never really talked about this to a lot of people, but in this deep work I’ve been doing, some of the things that I’ve discovered, which I I you know, I know my history and I grew up in a family of divorce as well, but my father was violent and my mother’s father was violent. So I saw this as a child. And so growing up with that, I became a protector and I would and I was the youngest child out of two of us and But I was protecting the family. So I a lot of my behaviors that I’ve learned over the years are self-protecting. Yeah. So I get where you’re coming from. And a lot of the the behaviors that I’ve been aware of for myself that I don’t really want to continue at this point in my life are probably the only way I could really understand that was to go back and address those and address the shadows like you talked about too. LISA KAHNI really respect you for doing that work, Gail. I didn’t realize we were both going through that at the same time. That’s interesting. It’s just I don’t know. GAIL DOBYVery short time yeah, it’s a very short time frame and I’ll share more about that after we got off the call, but I’ll it’s actually I’ve only worked on it for two weeks and the wow massive shift that I’ve experienced is incredible. Ugh. So wow. Well how I would relate to you is Yeah. Me too. LISA KAHNSo happy for LISA KAHNYeah. GAIL DOBYSometimes we have to face that that ugly, unpleasant fear, hurt, all the things that we went through, so that we can put it behind us. And the only way to do it is you can’t ignore it. You have to you have to assimilate it. You have to yeah. You have to bring it back in. Yeah. So good for you for surviving all this stuff, but the lessons you’ll learn and and what you’ll share with others and help others with. Is gonna be that much stronger as a result of it. LISA KAHNYou know, it reminds me a little bit. I have kind of laughed and thought about it. It’s a bit like you take all those experiences and you put them through the grinder and they become like mulch, right? It’s like fertilizer and mulch. And now we’re gonna put those around the trees because and they help make things stronger. You know, they help fertilize and grow and you know, inform what comes next. It’s funny that your experiences turned you into a protector. Mine turned me into a people pleaser. And you know, being a people pleaser for years, that is exhausting work. And you rarely actually worry about what you need. You’re just constantly going through these gymnastics and yoga postures to try to please everyone around you, whether it’s your clients or your family or your ex now ex-husband. You know, I went through all these things where I was just trying to please everyone. And it’s funny because when I look back now and I think of some of the team members that I have lost over the years, both good and bad, you know, some of the good ones. I actually think probably some of my people pleasing and sort of, you know, that turns into a bit of codependence. It creates a very unhealthy dynamic and it’s one I was completely unaware of. But now I look back and I see that I’m like, wow. You know, I think that it never is one person that ends a relationship. It always takes, you know, a combination of things from both people. And there have been some that have ended for me that I have been puzzled. I’m like, how how did that end? Why did that end? You know, I love that person. You know, what where did that come from? But now that I understand this tendency that I have had and have put that behind me, I can see more clearly how, you know, I contributed to things being out of balance. You know, I contributed to things being somewhat unhealthy. And it feels really good to look forward and realize I don’t have to do that anymore. GAIL DOBYMm. And I think I I would bring up here too, you talk about why those people aren’t here in your life now. But they were there for a season. People are there for seasons. And we have those seasons with people because they there’s a purpose for them to be there at that time. Not the whole time, but for a certain period of time. Yep. And I would agree. And that’s LISA KAHNYep, for sure. GAIL DOBYthose are kind of like our touchstones along the way that we have to we have to work within this really strange little winding path and we’re gonna run into those big rocks on the side and then it’s gonna carry them us over to the other side and we’re gonna go through this journey in our lives and it’s how we choose to show up for it and how we choose to respond to it that determines the maybe the happiness in our life. LISA KAHNYeah, truly. GAIL DOBYYeah. Well that’s interesting. And so on this path, and of course with sanctuary being a driving force for you, you went back and you got your masters. I I have a feeling you’re probably gonna get your PhD. LISA KAHNYou know, they keep calling me. So, you know, I have a feeling I will eventually cave. It’s really I love learning because it goes back to that thing we were just talking about, that that elevated perspective. When you are able to take knowledge of the ancients all the way forward and really use that to have that higher perspective, it’s such a relief. You know, I think we get so caught in the news cycles and the the things that we’re reading and the kind of dopamine hits of our phones and our computers and our tablets and the televisions and all that kind of stuff. I really love learning because it shuts all of that off and it just lets me really dip into something that is so much bigger than myself. That beautiful body of knowledge in the world. You know, I’m one of those little girls when I was small I used to love wandering through the library and I would always think all those books, gosh, if you could read all of these books, imagine the knowledge that you could contain. Why still feel that way? And, you know, so it’s fun to go back and take classes and learn about whether it’s philosophy or neuroscience and neuroaesthetics and neuroarchitecture or, you know, depth psychology. Like these things are all really interesting to me. I just signed up for a class in sacred geometry because I’m so interested in how these forms show up as symbols. You know, they we do see them. And some of the archetypal, you know, things that have come out of Jungian studies, but also we see them in our cathedrals, you know, we see them in nature, we see them in flowers, we see them in water, we see them everywhere. And I love that. And I I love to think about how these things that we see but don’t necessarily recognize as impactful, they are impactful to us. GAIL DOBYMm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, it is fascinating. And I’m trying to remember which monk it was. A story from a long time past, but I remember seeing this video and it was about this monk that believed that you could form ice crystals from your thoughts in water. interesting. Yes, it’s fascinating. And I guess I need to go look it up again because it was so interesting because that kind of ties in with all this because I do believe that our thoughts are much more powerful than we even realize. they are. Absolutely. I was having a coaching session with somebody yesterday and and we were talking about the fact that where she was before the conversation started and where she was by the end of the conversation were two different places. And and I was telling her, I said, you’re very in tune with yourself. So you know that when you are when you’re resisting, when you’re fearful, all of those things, you’re not able to attract what you want because your thoughts aren’t in the right place. Yeah. And so she had, she realized that by the end of the call that LISA KAHNYeah. GAIL DOBYShe actually has people coming to her just because she thinks about them. You’ve had experience that I have for sure. I’ll think about somebody I might think about you and I I got a text from you. But it’s just it it if you are connected, if you are aware, if you have not shut yourself down because you’re in the negative headspace, then those the right things come to you more naturally. LISA KAHNYeah, they do. You know, I it’s one of the things that I love about Sanctuary because it helps me quiet my mind. I think our minds are very noisy a lot of the times. I think the world is even more noisy. And being able to have a place where you can really like quiet it down, it actually allows you to hear. And I feel like we all have answers within ourselves, guidance within ourselves. And you know, whether you actually do believe it comes from within you or, you know, from an outside source, just to be quiet enough to be able to hear. Guidance, direction, affirmation, all of those sorts of things. It really it’s so important. GAIL DOBYIt is. It really is. I was just having a conversation with another past client who will be back. I know she will. just like you. You’ve come back how many times? I don’t know. But we were having this conversation and she was she’s been through a lot of health issues. Yeah. And her health issues have been so dramatic, not just hers, but her sisters, another employee on her team team. They all went through cancer. And so Sure. But her attitude and her way of thinking about things is she’s very positive and and she’s just grateful. She’s just grateful. And that gratitude is serving her well. It really is. LISA KAHNYeah. Yeah. GAIL DOBYSo what are you the most proud of in your life? LISA KAHNY it kind of is the theme of what we’re talking about right now. It is that I’ve been able to take things that have been some of the most difficult moments of my life and turn them into, you know, a viable business model and philosophy, a true sense of meaning and purpose in what I do and really a discovery of why I’m on the planet. You know, I feel like I know what I’m here to do. And I know not a lot of people know that. Not a lot of people have gotten to the point that they feel like this is what I’m here to do. A lot of people are asking that question. So, you know, I think that’s it. Yeah. GAIL DOBYMm. I like that. Well, and you have a long runway ahead. So what what about the next ten years? What will you have accomplished or contributed? Who are you gonna be? LISA KAHNYou know, I love that you asked that. I really would like to Be able to share the message and understanding of sanctuary on world stage. This is a message that is not just for my clients, this is not just for my family, it’s not even just for my community. I think it’s a real message of hope. I think it is solid strategies and coping mechanisms for living in the world today in a way that allows us to be sane and calm and happy and find meaning. So, you know, to really do that is my overall goal. I really want to share, share, share with as many people as I can. So to that end, you know, we have some big things planned right now. And actually just this next week, we’re gonna make a big move. my husband and I purchased a five-acre property in Naples and we are going to really create a space of sanctuary there on those acres that we can share with other people. We are going to live there certainly. My daughter Chloe will live there with us too. And there is a barn on this property that we are renovating into our design studio. And I know that we can also add to that workshop space, classroom space, perhaps a commercial kitchen for some future events. I think we can have retreats there. I think we can even have an outside amphitheater for Philip. you know, my musician husband, for him to be able to share his music with the world. He loves it so lovingly writes the soundtrack to Sanctuary. I just could not possibly have found a more perfect partner. I will tell you that for sure. so you know, thinking of being able to have something where we can bring people in and really have them be in Sanctuary. It is much easier to understand it, to comprehend it, and to be able to learn it while you are there. LISA KAHNIt is easier than just reading a book or taking a class online, although I’m intending that we will have both of those. So for people who can’t come in, you know, for those more live earning ret learning retreats. But I would like this to be a destination across the world. Like I would like people to be lining up to come and I think they will. I think this is a build it and they will come sort of a thing because I think the world is hungry for this. And I think that I have an understanding that is very unique. even among designers. I think it’s very unique the way that I look at this and share this. So that’s really the big thing. You know, we do have a property in North Carolina, and I see that. I love the mountains. It is such a perfect contrast to, you know, the Gulf Coast of Florida for us. It really is such a different form of sanctuary and such a beautiful one. I do think that there will be opportunity there for us also to do, you know, more sharing than we do, although right now it is just. destination for me to be able to fully unplug and rest. I rest there in ways that I don’t rest anywhere else on earth. so you know to continue to explore and learn about sanctuary, to be able to eventually get my doctorate, I would love that. so all of these things are goals for me. And I really would love to be able to meet some of the pivotal figures that are on the world stage that are bringing messages of peace, messages of you know deeper contemplation and understanding. I I would love that because I think Kindred spirits are few and far between. And I think it was Seth Godin who wrote one of his very pithy blog posts. And it was simply this Find the others. I love that. I love that. Yes. I know, isn’t it great? Yes. Yes. Yes. I’m about it. GAIL DOBYYes, yes. what is that? The Borg. I don’t know if you were ever a Star Trek person, but Yeah, it it’s kind of reminds me of that a little bit. So Well, it’s I think you’re gonna have an interesting journey ahead and it’s gonna be fun watching with all of this. Thank you. LISA KAHNYes. LISA KAHNYes. LISA KAHNThank you, Gail. You really were there at the very start of it. GAIL DOBYWell, and and that’s yeah, that’s the fun part for me because I I get to see people’s journey and where they go and where their resistances are and watch them break through some of those and really discover what it is that is going to drive that that motivation forward. LISA KAHNYeah. GAIL DOBYBecause it is internal and it you cannot you cannot do anything if you push it without it being internalized, truly owned within you. LISA KAHNI know you were very wise when you said that I would need to live sanctuary if I was going to sell it. You were completely correct. And you really set me on a journey of transformation that I never could have imagined. You know, when you said that, I thought to myself, live sanctuary, that sounds amazing. I’m just gonna get massages all the time and relax and have coffee with my friends and go to the beach. Yeah. That’s not really what my life is and was, you know, to be able to truly embody sanctuary. While we are going through tough times and good times. GAIL DOBYYeah, ultimately we get through it all, right? We get through all of the things that come our way. It just feels sometimes as if it’s impossible. Mm-hmm. And the reality is we we can get over it. Mm-hmm. LISA KAHNI think it was Shakespeare that said it is our thinking that makes it so. So I think when we are convinced we’re suffering, we are suffering. And when we decide that we’re actually not suffering and we can get that bigger perspective, we’re not suffering anymore. GAIL DOBYMm-hmm. True. Mm-hmm. Well you said you were reading a book, the D a Dictionary of Forgotten Words. Tell me about that book. Why is this so impactful? LISA KAHNSo good. I think it’s because I love dictionaries and I love words. And this one was particularly about, you know, it was written in the early 1900s. This is about a young woman whose dad was a lexographer who is a person who writes dictionaries and studies words. And he was involved in the creation of the Oxford Dictionary. And she would kind of attend these sessions with him where they would bandy about words. And it was her progress through because she wasn’t really allowed to participate. She was a young girl, but she started collecting words that she thought would be forgotten and keeping them on little slips of paper. And she ended up having them all published in a volume, and it was all of the words that she was afraid would be forgotten. And I just loved that. I mean, it was just such a beautiful book. Parts of it were scary and upsetting. they included some of the suffering of the Women who were marching for women’s rights at that point and some of the things that they experienced, which actually I didn’t know. So I learned a lot about history, but I learned a lot about what goes into the making of a dictionary and how the meaning of words were determined. And what’s funny is that these slips of paper that people would submit to the people who were writing the dictionary of what they thought the word meant, there are still collections of these out there available from the Oxford Common Dictionary, the very first edition. And you can buy them on eBay. GAIL DOBYInteresting. Mm-hmm. Hmm. Well that will probably be showing up in your work and your writing that’s coming up. Yes. LISA KAHNI know. LISA KAHNWell yes, you know it will. The other one that I’m reading right now that I am absolutely obsessed with is your brain on art. my gosh. This book is so incredible. The author of this is just really very well. She’s a neuroscientist and she just knows a lot about the brain and how it perceives things. So I do love both fiction and nonfiction. My nightstand is stacked with well, too many books. I shouldn’t be reading so many at once, but yet here I am. GAIL DOBYLikes. GAIL DOBYI do it too. I do it too. It’s pretty interesting. Mm-hmm. Most of mine are business books, but it but a lot of psychology books too, because I feel as if a lot of the work that has to happen is up here. Mm-hmm. LISA KAHNIt really does. You know, it’s funny. Y you are such a source of great books. One of the best books I’ve ever read in my whole lifetime came from you. GAIL DOBYThe one thing, right? LISA KAHNNo. GAIL DOBYwhich one? LISA KAHNThe obstacle is the way. GAIL DOBYthe obstacle. yes. Yes, that is a favorite of mine. Yeah. Very good book. gosh. And I’ll have to give you some more because I’ve been reading Please do that lately. Yeah. When you have some time to read in your spare time. LISA KAHNI would love it. Give me a couple of weeks to move. GAIL DOBYI think I’ll give you a couple of months to get settled off that. I think it would make a big difference. well I think the other thing that’s interesting too, I see you enjoying your life so much more because you’re also, of course, you’ve got this wonderful, handsome husband of yours that is just delightful. And then you have a lot of good friends and you have been doing a lot of travel. I have. you have and I think all of those things are leading to that fullness that allows you to be able to bubble up and enjoy and share, not from a place of scarcity, but from a place of abundance. LISA KAHNYou’re so right. You know, I took a class last year through the Harvard Medical School. Once I finished my degree, I was really missing the learning. And I took a class about human happiness. Fascinating. I didn’t know that Harvard has the longest standing study on human happiness. It’s been going on for 85 years. Isn’t that incredible? Amazing. And so I know a psychiatrist who is currently running the study gave the class and GAIL DOBYWow. That’s LISA KAHNYou know, the entire thing, they covered so many wonderful topics. They covered loneliness, they covered so many things that people experience, the lack of ability to find meaning. But all of their findings, what it all comes down to at the end of the day, human connection, connection with other people. And it doesn’t even have to be really deep connection. It can even be The light everyday ones like the barista at your Starbucks or the person who cuts your ham at the deli, you know, it’s just the the people you get to know, you connect with them, even in light little ways. Human beings need connection. And what’s isn’t that interesting? And so I think it’s that balance then of like you need some contemplation time, you need some alone time so that you can kind of quiet, like we talked about before, but you need that so that then you can charge your battery back up. to be able to go back out in the world or to invite people into your world so that then you can have that that time of connection. GAIL DOBYThat makes me think about what as I as I age, I get to do more of what I want to do. So I don’t cook anymore. So that’s one of those things that yeah, I don’t. And we go out every other night for dinner and we go to some of the same restaurants. So we know the same servers and the people on their team. And we have these nice chats with them and they’re they’re so happy to see us and we’re happy to see them. LISA KAHNUh-huh. GAIL DOBYAnd it really started from just the idea of help of making sure that people feel seen. Mm-hmm. And if you can help people feel seen, then they feel so much better about life and they are happier and they are able they serve you better. You serve them better. And I was thinking about it was it really started just because I thought as I become older. I want to keep my mind sharp. So I want to work on really learning people’s names. And that’s a way for me to keep on keep sharp is that I make a point to learn people’s names. And so that kind of started the whole thing. And then next thing you know, we’re getting to the point where my husband, who’s an extreme introvert, is having fun enjoying getting to know people too. And when you walk out of the restaurant and you end up LISA KAHNYeah. GAIL DOBYhugging the server because that server is somebody that you’ve been coming to for years now and they just they like you and you like them and it’s just yeah a nice little exchange. They’re never gonna be your best friends but they’re yeah they just need to be seen. And that that connection can be light like you said and it can be deep and all levels are important. And that LISA KAHNExactly. GAIL DOBYneed that people have to be seen is just so crucial. LISA KAHNIt is, you know, it kind of reminds me what we were talking about just a little bit ago about those cards of gratitude. You know, each one of those was a way for the people who received them to be seen. And I think that’s why it was so effective. GAIL DOBYI love that and it also restarted your business because again you were showing people that you cared about them as people. You weren’t there to ask them for anything. LISA KAHNExactly. GAIL DOBYI’ve actually shared that story many times about the the fifty cards because have you? I think it when people I have many times because people will say, Well, how do I get my business going? And how do I get more clients that and I said it’s right there in front of you because it’s all the people you already know are the links that you need to build a business that you want. There. You just need to keep in touch. So it’s a relationship building. It’s true. Yeah. LISA KAHNyes. GAIL DOBYWell, we always have these interesting conversations and I’d love to hear your three takeaways for today. They’re always fun. LISA KAHNMy takeaways for today are that It is our darkest days that bring our deepest learning. Also that LISA KAHNKnowing someone over a long period of time like I have known you is the kind of connection that fuels a happy life. And Also, that we can really trust our knowing. You know, you talked about it a little bit ago about kind of knowing that it’s time, knowing who’s calling, knowing, thinking of someone, and kind of drawing them in, you know, at that time. That energy current kind of goes out. But I think we can really trust that. I think we can, it’s not something you can measure. It’s not something that you can scientifically prove, but yet. It is there and it is very real and it is very impactful when you do trust it. And I think that it is something that can really guide us at times when we are unsure. And I love that. GAIL DOBYMm-hmm. Yeah, I love that too. It’s great. Well, as always, it’s a it’s interesting and I’m sure we’ll have more conversations, but to me these are the fun ones because we can get into the into the heart. It’s not just LISA KAHNYeah. For sure. I appreciate you, Gail. GAIL DOBYLove you too. Mm-hmm.

This week on the Creative Genius podcast, Gail Doby welcomes Mel Bean, the principal of Mel Bean Interiors, to talk about her 20-year journey through the interior design landscape and the predictability of scaling an elite firm. Mel pulls back the curtain on how a structured leadership framework—specifically partnering with an exceptional Director of Operations—unlocked a positive operational flow that allowed her to step back into her role as a visionary. She discusses overcoming limiting beliefs regarding business ownership and how deep dive financial modeling completely shifted how her company tracks profitability and projects revenue. Finally, Mel outlines how she structures a hybrid environment that gives her staff the flexibility to be deeply present for family milestones without sacrificing professional excellence. In this episode, you’ll hear about: Changing Paths: Mel’s realization a few years into college that she needed to leave to unlock her hidden creative side. Shopping vs. Designing: Breaking down the 20+ decisions that go into a single furniture piece, and why social media can be a powerful client-education tool. The Non-Billable Employee: Overcoming the fear of hiring a non-billable Director of Operations, and how that single choice can skyrocket your growth. Data Over Doubt: Why escaping isolation and swapping raw, un-redacted financial metrics with design allies across the country fuels true inspiration. “Why Not Me?”: Moving past imposter syndrome and the limiting beliefs of a non-entrepreneurial upbringing to confidently pursue massive lifestyle goals. If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full show notes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s15e1-shownotes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICPH-3mmR8Y Episode Transcript Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors. Click to show transcript GAIL DOBYWelcome to Creative Genius. I’m so glad you’re here, Mel. And I can’t wait for us to have this conversation. So here’s my first question for you. Who would you have or what would you have on a desert island if you were stranded? MEL BEANit’s funny that my first thought that I have is that I want my espresso machine so that I can make my morning latte. GAIL DOBYI’m sure there’s some plugins out there somewhere. MEL BEANI I’d need an ice maker then as well though, because you can’t have a hot latte on a desert GAIL DOBYWell, there you go. I like that. Okay. Well, interesting thing to think about. And I’m sure there Yeah. And I bet there might be a few people on your journey with you. Who would you have with you? MEL BEANProbably a first for you. MEL BEANWell, I would want to take my boys for sure. my sons Cooper and Chase. They are seniors in high school. And of course, other than just being obsessed with them as my children, I also think they are so much fun. So they would turn a kind of an unfortunate situation into a good time, I think. GAIL DOBYthat sounds like fun. Well, I’ve only seen them in passing on our Zoom call, so it’s really fun. MEL BEANI might be biased, but I think they’re pretty great. GAIL DOBYWell, I’m sure you feel that way as every mom should. So good for you. Well, let’s talk about your journey into being a designer. How did you get started with that? MEL BEANGosh, well, I started college dead set. Well, even in high school, I was going psych pre-med. I was good at math and science. And so I went really deep into college prep and into all of the classes that would set me up for success in that career. And it wasn’t until a couple of years into college that I started doubting that. I got into some tricky classes that I could do fine in, but I wasn’t excited about. And I started to get the concern of is this what I’m going to feel like the rest of my life? And it wasn’t immediately clear to me that I wanted to do interior design. But once I did discover it, I felt like something had clicked into place when I changed my major in my first class. And it just made me want to go back and get a do-over on I wish I’d taken the art classes in college, but I was too focused on all the college prep. I wish I’d had done these things that not only would have kind of led me to my career path sooner, but also would have just helped me to get to know myself in a different way. And so I was really thrilled to get into interior design in college. And then as quickly as I could, I got an internship so that I could see, okay, what is this really like? What is this, what is the day to day? What does it look like? I know it’s not like a HGTV show. I know that’s not the reality of this industry. And so fortunately I loved it. GAIL DOBYDid you were there any surprises when you got into it? MEL BEANSo many, I really didn’t have a lot of expectations of what it looked like. I think that’s I didn’t grow up with any interior designers in my life. And so I think that’s part of what took me so long to consider it as an option for myself. now it seems a little obvious with hindsight. and so I went into it, the advantage of that is I didn’t go into it with a lot of expectations. I hadn’t seen the way other people had done it before me. So I was really fortunate to learn under several different design firms here in Tulsa where I live and really wonderful people who kind of went above and beyond in training me and giving me opportunities. And so I did see everything from creating inventory and showroom and the back end of what all goes into that through managing projects and the infinite number of details that go into it. I think that’s something that most clients are so shocked by. Today is the amount of detail that goes into every project, the number of decisions that go into it. So that was surprising to me, but also felt like a great opportunity. I saw all these ways that really nuanced ways in which I could guide a project or guide the the feeling a space gives me and the people who use it. GAIL DOBYMm-hmm. Yeah. And it’s something that seems so normal for us that are designers because we can envision what it’s going to look like done, even when we’re just looking at fabrics and pieces of wood and just samples. And I think it’s it’s really hard for people who aren’t visual like we are. So how do you get over that hurdle with them of how they helping them envision this? MEL BEANYou know, it’s been interesting with social media. That’s recently been kind of a trend that designers are doing and we haven’t participated as well, that you show a single image and pop up all of these decisions that went into that one image. And we’ve had a lot of clients say how helpful that was to them. it is our job to create really clear expectations about the time and investment it’s going to cost our potential clients. and so we guide them through our process. We really explain everything, but we we communicate the difference between shopping and designing. Sometimes I wish we could just shop. Sometimes I wish I could just select this one item, this one item, this one item and put together a a design that way, but it’s not the way we work. I wouldn’t actually want to work that way. It would be so limiting to our vision. Whereas one furniture piece, as you know, may have, you know, 20 decisions that have to be made in order to get to that one look. And so it does help. Social media helps a little bit. Educating on our process helps a little bit. And then we do use visual tools and present like this is the fabric, this is the wood sample, this is the wood species, this is the trim detail, this is, you know, and so many, this is the exact size. Here’s the cushion infill. there are so many more options. But that can feel overwhelming, but at the same time that’s why we’re here is we’ll tell you what we think is best. So you don’t have to make all those decisions. We are the experts who have educated ourselves on which info from that vendor is the best for this sofa type and that chair type. So you don’t have to do any of that. That’s part of what you’re hiring us for. GAIL DOBYMm. Yeah. Well, and I think that the you’re making a very good point that most clients don’t understand that. They don’t understand the complexities of this business. And I remember just talking to a couple of my CPAs that I’ve worked with over the years, I’ve probably worked with four so far. And over the years they’ve said, You have the hardest business I’ve ever seen. It is so complicated and so many details. Wow. And they just don’t understand why it has to be so difficult. But again, like you said, one item could have twenty decisions easily. MEL BEANYeah, we’ve experienced that as well. We’ve actually had to transition from CPA firms over the years to find the right fit because they’re not used to a model in which we’re billing hourly for time, we’re purchasing products, we are marking up those products, we are you know, it’s just a lot of moving parts that isn’t it’s not really like any industry that I’m aware of. GAIL DOBYMm-hmm. It is not. It is not. For sure. I know that getting into this for myself, I was a career changer. So for me, I remember that I was shocked when I had my when I got my design degree and I said, Okay, well, I’m done now. Now how am I gonna get business? And luckily I had a sales and marketing training, but I remember that I was just perplexed because I thought, you know. I have a business degree, but that doesn’t mean I know anything about this business. And it took me a long time to learn the inside and outside of the business to the point where that’s really what I love is teaching that part because the it’s so complicated for our business. MEL BEANBut and it’s constantly changing, as you know. GAIL DOBYis, it is, yeah. Yeah, especially with AI. AI is changing the whole world of design and business and life and everything. MEL BEANYeah, definitely. I mean, I think about how, you know, constantly, every single day we are paying attention, learning new things, honing our processes. Even after t more than two decades in this industry, seriously every single day I’m honing our process. And That’s been really powerful. I kind of like that about it. We are not in a stagnant career. We are not in something that is I like the creativity. I like the problem solving. It’s not without its challenges. But I do think it’s really exciting to see where it leads you because as you and I have worked together, we’ve worked on one year goals, three year goals, five year goals, and then five years later it looks very different and we have different opportunities. And then as you said, like AI. it’s changing the structure of how we do things. And I feel like we’re just dipping our toes into all the ways we can utilize it. sometimes I laugh because I think, well gosh, my teenagers know more than we do. It’s just kind of like a baseline for them of this exposure to AI. And I really like to see how other designers are using it. There are ways I am excited to use it and ways I will never use it. and I think that’s Heart of the excitement and responsibility. GAIL DOBYYeah. Well, and I think back to when I started InDesign, the internet was just starting. It really was. It sounds so antiquated. That is so crazy. Yeah. And it’s so crazy to think that now we just don’t even think twice about it. We go to Chat GPT. We even bypass Google to go get more in-depth answers to what we’re looking for. So yeah, I think we’re going to see a big shift in our MEL BEANRemember it. GAIL DOBYindustry over the years with having AI. So what’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned so far with in your business? MEL BEANI think it’s well, it’s something that you and I have talked about recently. the right person in the right seat. GAIL DOBYMm-hmm. MEL BEANIt seems obvious, but at the same time I’ve learned over the years how that can launch you to achieve your goals or put a real roadblock in your goals, even if everything else is going right. And so it’s a challenge because it’s not always clear. It’s not always clear when you’re hiring. it’s something that I have seen personally how it can add so much more stress to my life if there’s not the right person in the right seat. things that stress that I shouldn’t that I don’t need that’s avoidable. And then I can see how it also can take so much off of my plate, how things can get into a really positive flow when you have the right person in the right seat. And you know one of the best examples I have of that is Kath, my director of operations. it can feel scary to hire a non billable employee in our industry. and she has become just a core part of developing the MBI strategies like strategic planning, obviously overseeing operations. She has enabled me to do some of the things I love while we as a team can grow the business in a way that really suits our lives. And it can be whatever we want it to create it to be. We’ve gotten to cultivate our culture into a what we dreamed it would be that supports us to have like personal lives and families and be able to pick up our kids from school and so I think that’s all impossible if you don’t have the right person in the right seat. GAIL DOBYI I totally agree with you. And Kath is amazing and you have just such a great second in command. And I think one of the things that’s been really interesting is watching you and and certainly you came back for a second VIP and and just having that conversation with her in the room. So that we’re looking at what is your vision going forward? What are we building? What are the opportunities you have? What are the challenges you’re having? And just bringing her perspective into it has been a real asset for you. MEL BEANYeah, and I think back to our first VIP day, it was really interesting. That was twenty twenty. So we had a virtual VIP. I hadn’t seen Kath in person. We’re doing this from our kitchen tables separately. She’s at her house, I’m at mine. And it was all pretty new in navigating. I really hadn’t had anyone at Melbean Interiors that was so intertwined into the like behind the curtain a little bit on yes, financials, but just strategy and vision and goals and the structure of the team over one year, three years, five years. And at the beginning, you know, that was for us and our business was changing a lot. Part of the reason that we hired you is because we felt like we’d have s we’d had some success. We’d had some ideal clients and we were lacking a really clear vision for where we wanted to take the business and we didn’t have like data on what other designers were really doing, what was working, what wasn’t. There’s a lot of like even it’s gotten a lot better, but a lot of keeping everything tight to chest. And so you gave us a lot of data, a lot of guidance. But then also beyond that, our experience has connected us with other designers from all over the country who We’ve developed really strong friendships with trusts. They become allies in our lives. And so we experience share. We give a lot of information that probably wouldn’t have really thought I’d be diving that deep into people outside into details with people outside my company five years ago before we kicked off. And so Kath being an integral part of that from the get go was really foundational in us being able to implement the things that we were that you were helping us like have clarity on. GAIL DOBYSure. Well, and I was thinking about the and it had been that long five year period, and then you came back for the VIP. And some people come back two years, three years, and we have people that have done seven or eight of them. And it’s so interesting seeing how it changes each time somebody comes back because usually there’s some big transition or change in the business that you’re getting ready to navigate, or you’re right in the middle of it, you don’t know what to do. And it was it was really interesting and a lot of fun working with you and Cap and just having that interaction where we were just r diving into all those different ideas that you all had and figuring out which ones make sense, which ones don’t make sense, and what is the timing of when those things should be attacked if you’re gonna do that. MEL BEANYeah, our visions for the business are very different. next year will be ten years of Melbean Interiors and the things we wanted to achieve, many of them we have. And so now the opportunities seem very different. you know, we’re thinking about things beyond what I would have considered as typical parts of an interior design firm. we’ve got a lot of opportunities, we can take it a lot of different directions at this point. And so that’s for us right now was a really critical time to check back in again, really explore those opportunities and start to make decisions about which things are a go right now and which things are a maybe later or maybe never. GAIL DOBYRight. And sometimes that’s the best thing is just knowing, having clarity about what you are and aren’t going to do and what you might do is and knowing what that timing is so that you’re not wasting valuable energy on things that will take you off track from what you really need to be focused on. gosh, yes. And I’m one of those, so I I know MEL BEANYeah, reigning in the visionaries. Some yeah. GAIL DOBYWell, what were you hoping to gain as a result of getting into coaching? Because I think that’s something that a lot of people when they’re thinking about getting coaching, they might have some fears about it, about what’s going to come out of it. So what were you hoping to gain first? MEL BEANYeah, sure. I mean, the fears were time and money. especially during that time I was homeschooling my kids, running a business, like lots of things were up in the air. so that w those were the hesitations. And then I can laugh about that a little bit now because every bit of time and money that I’ve invested has been way more beneficial than those dollar amounts or those hours. It’s helped me tremendously. So, yeah, what I was hoping to achieve at that time, I felt as if I was spinning my wheels a little bit. We were working so hard, but not necessarily in a clear direction. So it didn’t feel like progress. I mean, success felt great. It didn’t feel like we are working towards a place that we very clearly want to be, both in the business, but also what it meant for my personal life. the types of hopes and dreams I had, you do a great job of looking at both. so that’s been really helpful for me and I’ve needed accountability. I’ve needed kind of the the coaching calls, check-ins, the dive a little deeper into certain challenges we’re experiencing at any given time. And so I think a lot of us can feel pretty alone in doing this, right, in this business. And so what I said about people keeping things tight to chest, that feels lonely too. And so it’s actually it doesn’t feel threatening to open up and share. It actually feels much more inspiring and ener energizing to feel connected to people in that way. And so having you to talk to, having the other coaches to talk to, share insights and wisdom gave me a lot of confidence, gave me data. You know, I like data. It gave me an understanding of, I mean, the financials, for example, you’ve completely transformed the way that I approach my financials and I really like to dive deep and analyze and project. And it’s really been helpful for me though, because it felt like again, like I’m doing a lot of this work, but maybe it’s not the most beneficial way to spend my time and energy. And so now I feel like I know what to do to invest my time and energy and money in a way each day that is actually pushing me closer to my goals. Mm-hmm. GAIL DOBYYeah. And it’s it’s so interesting and you were talking a little bit about you were worried about the time, you were worried about the money. Was there anything else that was holding you up or creating concerns around going through the program? MEL BEANYeah, I think even though I was wanting to connect with people, there is a little reluctance when it’s new. And so I think I was a little reluctant to share, maybe at at the very beginning. And I I think for me, I’m just a person who it takes me a moment to feel familiar, and then once I feel familiar, I’m good to go. And so I I think the familiarity, like the lack of I mean it’s just uncertainty, Gail. We all love uncertainty, I guess. So that was a piece of it. I think we all have some limiting beliefs that we have to overcome. And for me, some of those go back to the reason I didn’t find this profession for myself sooner. And I didn’t grow up around any interior designers, but I also didn’t grow up with an awareness of entrepreneurs really around me. And so I didn’t realize until I was even in in my career that maybe I had some limiting beliefs about that being for like other people. And obviously I consciously don’t believe that, but in there was something that I discovered in myself that was like a business ownership is for other people. This career is for other people. And so I had to overcome that to start my business. And I felt like I did. But then I think we all have a little bit of imposter syndrome. So diving deeper into these things is so helpful, so beneficial, but also can feel a little scary. That wasn’t a conscious hesitation that I had, but I think If I’m being really honest with myself, there was a little bit of that in taking on hiring a coach, hi you know, diving deeper into the visions I see in my business and, you know, could I achieve these goals? Could I do the things that I dreamed of doing? Mm-hmm. And now of course I’m like, why not me? Why not if anyone else can, why not me? GAIL DOBYWell, and you’re a good business business person. And I’ve that’s one of those things that when I look at who is going to be successful in our program, it’s always someone who’s a learner and somebody who’s willing to take action and is willing to be uncomfortable because you have to be uncomfortable to make the changes. And if you can do those things, you can completely shift your business. So I think It’s interesting because I know you and I had a conversation before you decided to come back and do that second VIP. So let’s talk about what prompted that because that that’s another big decision to make. MEL BEANyou I’ve gotta make sure I’m aware of which thing you’re talking about because I feel like we went through so many things. You know, I came with a laundry list of of potential. I’ll just share that I am a forty five well I’m forty four right now. I will be a forty five year old single empty nester. My boys are seniors in high school. They’re going off to college. I have a wonderful business with an incredible team who have an GAIL DOBYI know. I MEL BEANenabled me to be able to take dream trips with my boys and they’ve been more protective of my time than I would be. And so I’m in a position where I don’t have some of the parameters and limitations on my next five years, ten years of my life versus where I thought I would be right now. Mm-hmm. I thought I would have things anchoring me to Tulsa a lot more than I do. my boys are not looking at college anywhere near here. So it’ll be interesting to see where they land. But personally, that feels you know, the opportunities are wide open on what I want to do. Do I want to launch, I have kind of a property business that I want to explore different ways to move in that direction. I have some concepts for the business that I’d like to explore. Do I decide If my boys end up on a beach somewhere, beach town, do I buy a beach house and split my time between Tulsa and wherever that place is? And do I launch a second Melbean Interiors? So as you can see, that’s just a few things off the top of my mind. I mean, the other dreams are do I live six months out of the year in Europe? Do I, you know, it’s kind of crazy to say these things out loud because I would have just thought I wouldn’t be in a position to be considering these things just from commitments in my So in some ways it’s easier when you have limitations that you can like focus your goals. So right now the future feels wide open for me. I have a lot of visions for the business itself. and so our VIP day was largely like help me have some clarity on what are some viable options to explore, what are some things you guys understanding? my business so well, understanding me personally, my life, my goals so well, you were really able to have conversations that gave me a little more clarity on what’s most important to me, what’s most realistic for me, what excites me and energizes me about the things I’m going to choose to do over the next couple of years. GAIL DOBYMm-hmm. Yeah. And they are really exciting things and they will require more changes. And some of those changes will be fairly substantial, which is not actually a bad thing. And it’s really fun. I love watching this because we’ve worked with people. We started this business almost 18 years ago. So over the time we have people I have somebody who’s just coached today and she’s been a client for twelve years. And we are going through another major shift in her business. And it reminds me of where you are right now because it’s just similar, different things that you’re both wanting to do. But I think those big transitions are really important to have some perspective from outside. Sometimes you can’t make those decisions alone about how to approach it. MEL BEANYeah, you guys have provided a sounding board that makes me feel a lot more confident. and again the data. You guys have a lot of data that I don’t have access to. You have a lot of knowledge that helps the process for sure. And you know, I also think about my team. I’m thinking about all of these things for my visions for the business, for my personal life, but I also have this incredible team that I’m considering their futures. They’re all in different places than they were five years ago. And they have different goals as well. And that’s really exciting to consider where they see themselves within MBI and in their own lives. And that’s been very empowering for me to have the freedom to explore this in this way. GAIL DOBYThat’s something I love about the people in our community is how much you all care about your teens and how much you want to help them grow as people too. And I think especially with females having someone like you who can be a mentor and a guide and a leader and show the way the fact that you can have a very successful business and have a family and do all the things that you want to do and travel and build wealth and build financial freedom, all of those things are possible. And I think our industry is probably one of the best for women to be in because you really have that opportunity that you often don’t in other types of businesses. MEL BEANI agree completely. It’s impossible for me to imagine my life in a different career looking as beautiful as my life has. And I feel very passionately about making sure that applies to my team as well. And so we have a a structure that really supports flexibility. We are still on a hybrid work schedule. So We have our week structured in ways that we have our in office time and then we have our designated kind of free time. But it enables my team to do things I couldn’t do because I didn’t yet have my own business with flexibility when my boys were young. And so I didn’t get to pick them up from school. I didn’t they had to go to aftercare and I was working more to pay for that aftercare, you know. but I missed out on those moments in the car, hearing them so excited telling me about the day. I got it later when I picked them up from aftercare, but it’s just a different experience. And so my team can do that. My team can go to the lunch parties and the school events and the sports and the things. And I feel very passionately that you shouldn’t have to the women shouldn’t have to feel as if they need to choose one or the other. A a business and career that they love or being a mom. Or if it’s not being a mom, being a family member, a friend in a way this should add to your life, not take away from your life. And we don’t get into interior design because we want to be, you know, we’re it’s a creative, visionary, dreamy job. It’s a lot of hard work. And we also know it’s it’s not as glamorous as they can see. But truly none of us got into this to be overwhelmed and exhausted and pulled in every direction. And like this is really a creative magical profession if it can support your life in the right way. GAIL DOBYAnd it can and you have made a really nice income for yourself over the years, which is something that again is probably a greater income than you can have in almost any other career as a female. Yeah. So yeah, so I it sounds as if you’ve had a lot of insights as a result of the work. And if somebody else’s if you were talking to somebody else and they were interested in knowing about whether it’s worth it to go through the program or do the VIP, what would you say? MEL BEANGosh, I mean immediately, yes, I understand the hesitation. It’s the unknown. you have so many valuable tools that provide a lot of information that immediately make it worth the initial investment. In my opinion, that has right away, you have enough. If you commit to executing it, if you commit to doing the work, there’s like no way you won’t succeed. and learn a lot about yourself in the process, a lot about your business, a lot about things that are blind spots too that are slowing you down. it immediately I saw those benefits and results. even in a weird time, 2020, when we first came on, I mean, such a unpredictable time. It was the roughest year we’ve ever had. You know, it was wild times and that was really stressful. And even in that those conditions. it still made a world of difference. And then what about year two, three, four, five? Why do I keep doing it? In addition to continually exposing us to new speakers and tools and support and our coaching. And in addition to that, the community. the fact that I have dear friends who I can call with any question I have, or if I just want to vent, or if I just need support and want to talk through something, I have a community of peers that I met through Pearl Collective. Who we really get excited to support each other. We genuinely care about each other. And that piece of it is so integrated into the way that you structure things with retreats. And it really truly was far more than I imagined it would be. the retreats themselves. I can feel so like bogged down in my business and then go to a retreat, and in a few days I have completely reset my energy levels, a new mindset with a lot more clarity in the bit for the business and for what I need to be focusing on. and I think even the way you guys structure those and spread them out is very wise and works for me psychologically. Like it really all is so much more than I imagined it would be. GAIL DOBYThat’s so great. I’m so glad. We we work hard behind the scenes. Yeah. And it is a passion project for me. And I’ve been doing this for a long time. But to me, that was the thing that I just wanted other people not to have to go through the pain that I went through in my business when I was doing my interior design business. So this is business number two for me. And I think I’ve learned a lot of important lessons. And I hope the MEL BEANThank you. GAIL DOBYsharing those helps other people. That’s the goal here. MEL BEANYeah, I can’t imagine anyone it wouldn’t help. I think that at any level there’s a tool that will teach you something new, help you better understand yourself. it really I think that’s one of the ideas is that people think, Okay, you only need to hire a coach if you’re like brand new, if you’re entry level, if your revenue is under a certain amount, or you know, if you’re trying to get that first hurdle. But like you said with the doing a another VIP day, this this is there’s always a different level that we have reached with a different set of demands and new things to explore and understand and new opportunities. And so it it’s able like I’ve been able to grow within Pearl and you all have guided me at each level and I find value at every level. GAIL DOBYIt’s so fun to watch it too. Cause we see these these levels are fairly predictable. We know that people hit it at a million, they hit it at a half million, then a million, then really about two, and then about two to two and a half somewhere in there, and then it goes to five, and then it goes to say seven and a half and ten. So it jumps by big increments, and each one of those is so different. And we have people at all of those levels. And it’s really fun to see. how people evolve, but also how you all support each other as you’re going through this journey, which is great. So let’s talk about those goals for next year. What are what’s your biggest opportunity or thing that you want to work on next year? MEL BEANWell, we have some clear growth goals in terms of both revenue and profitability, but also within our team. we have a vision for how we want to structure our business. And so we know after our second VIP day, especially clearly, what role we need to hire win over the next year and two years and three years, actually. We’ve kind of got it all mapped out at this point. but that is the most clarity is around. our hiring, what revenue is needed to support that, what type of work that we need in order to achieve this. And that kind of go goes alongside the PR firmware that we’re working with and having making sure everyone’s on the same page to get us there. those are the biggest goals I think around the business right now are very clear of financial revenue, profitability, growth goals. continuing to secure ideal clients, understanding what that looks like and who they are and where they are. And we’ve changed our processes a lot. They’ve evolved over time and we have a lot better processes in place that are supporting these projects at this level. So I feel really good going into the year for all of those things. And then some of the other big picture things we talked about for VIP, those are also largely waiting on seeing where my boys land for college before I can make any big decisions there. I have a lot of ideas, but we really can’t implement anything until then. So those will be a later in twenty twenty six kind of exciting sprint. We’ll see where things go. It’s a very exciting time. GAIL DOBYIt is. It’s so fun. It’ll be great to watch see what happens next year. So let’s kind of wind down a little bit and talk about what your guilty pleasure is. MEL BEANboy. Okay, so I I admittedly disassociate by reading fiction. I love to read. It’s one of the things that I wind down and relax at night, sometimes too late into the night. but it’s really helpful and centering for me. And yes, that’s beautiful classics, Jane Austen, those things. But it’s also admittedly some of the romanticy books. GAIL DOBYAll right. MEL BEANThere’s some of that as well. And also I’ll add DoorDash is the other guilty pleasure. Very busy life and cooking for one, when the boys aren’t here, you know, it’s just sometimes easier. So those are my two guilty pleasures. GAIL DOBYThat’s so funny. I was just talking to one of our other clients yesterday and she said, I just have to tell you. She said, It’s such a little thing, but it’s such a big thing. I had told her about this meal service that we get. My husband and I, I I quit cooking three years ago. And when I quit cooking, I just all of a sudden one day just said, That’s it. I’m not doing this anymore. I have I’m so proud of myself. I have not turned on the cooktop in our brand new house. And I and I’ve been here for ten months now. So we ordered tempo, which is so it’s like an advertisement for them, but it comes every Monday. It’s not frozen, it’s all fresh and it’s really good. So reasonably priced is less than going out and getting fast foods. MEL BEANYeah, I’ve done plans like that as well that have been really helpful and I’ve actually found a local one here in Tulsa, so I love that even more. Supporting a small local business and it’s incredible to like just what I need. And so that truly is like I think those are things that I used to feel a little guilty about. I’m glad you don’t feel that way about your cooktop because I used to feel a little guilty about that. I actually do love cooking when I have the time and energy and all of that. So I do still cook, but then having DoorDash is a last minute safety net when I just just don’t have it in me. GAIL DOBYWell, it it was kind of funny and my husband just looked at me and said, Well, what are we going to eat? I said, Well, we’ll still eat, but and we go out three times a week. So we we’re not exactly suffering at all. Right. Yeah, so that’s my guilty pleasure is not having to cook anymore. Great. Yeah, it’s great. And so I’m I’m happy to share this with people because I hope they will find something like that for themselves. Because if you just are feeling overwhelmed with having to be MEL BEANRight. GAIL DOBYthe mom and the cook and take care of everything in your business too. Just give yourself a break. These things are so worth it. It just gives you back your time. So let’s talk about takeaways because we want to give some very good suggestions for people to be able to implement. MEL BEANObviously we already talked about right person in the right seat. that is so important. And I think having steps at the beginning of hiring, I’ve come a long way in what I what I’m looking for, what is our process to hire. I’ve made the mistake of doing some like rushed hires that feel like we’re in a bind. And if we don’t it’s better to sit in pain a little bit longer than rush and make a like a fear-based hire. that’s something I’ve learned for sure. I think that some of the biggest takeaways that I have are from my career, the things that I’ve learned are definitely, for one thing, do what feels true to you. It’s great to learn from other people, but it’s also a beautiful thing to create exactly what you want to see in the world, both in design, the types of work the type of work that you do, but also in the type of culture you create within your team. I feel like a lot of the things that I’m doing in my business are a little bit of a feminist act, like a political act to support women and to empower us to be able to do the things we want to do in our lives. And so we you can think outside of the box and create something really beautiful that maybe other people tell you won’t work and it really can. it’s so important you won’t find success if you’re pretending to be something you’re not. You need to be yourself and you will draw in the people who are the right fit for you, both in your team and in your clients. GAIL DOBYSo true. I think those are great suggestions and thank you so much for taking the time today to share your experience. And I hope it’s inspiring to all the women out there who are just maybe in the early stages of of their career or even where you are, where you’re about to be an empty nester. So every point in your life is a new opportunity to learn. And I think that’s one of the things that makes you so successful in your business is your willingness to learn and face those hard. hard things and do those hard things. So it it’s just so fun to watch. MEL BEANWell thank you so much, Gail. Thanks for everything you’ve taught me over the years and guided me through and thanks for having me today. GAIL DOBYit’s a pleasure. So good to see you. MEL BEANGood to see you too.

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: The Evolution of a Career: Ann’s 15-year tenure at Kravet and her transition to founding Moxie Marketing, which exclusively serves the interior design space. The “Karen” Label: How modern slang is used to silence women who speak up when they are unhappy or mistreated. Double Standards in Society: The contrast between how society shames young girls for their pop star fandom while celebrating men for their passion for sports teams. The Perfectionism Trap: Why women are often hesitant to take risks because they haven’t been taught that it is okay to fail or make mistakes. The Power of Succession: Ann’s observation that many women build thriving businesses but fail to create a succession plan, missing out on passive revenue and a lasting legacy. The Highlights of the Design Industry: How Gail’s experience with design clients has been primarily positive, building communities of women who are happy to collaborate instead of compete. If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full show notes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s14e10-shownotes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w6Ze2vOavk Episode Transcript Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors. Click to show transcript 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: Specialized Outsourcing: Why firms are increasingly looking for virtual senior designers and how to manage that role without “boots on the ground”. Common Mistakes: The “Lack of Communication” trap and the “Flipping the Script” error—expecting a CAD specialist to suddenly handle invoicing. The Cost of Flexibility: A breakdown of current hourly rates for virtual assistants, and what advantages freelancers have over full-time employees for certain roles. Onboarding Success: How to treat virtual assistants as true members of the team, including firm email addresses and inclusion in weekly check-ins. If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full show notes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s14e9-shownotes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIMy2E3KEU4 Episode Transcript Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors. Click to show transcript 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: The Pandemic Pivot: How the team managed the dual upheaval of a global pandemic and the founder moving across the country in 2020. Alignment over Accuracy: Why learning to work as a leadership team was a bigger achievement than simply mastering markups and financial data. Buying the Legacy: The emotional weight and “healthy scramble” of New Year’s Eve signatures to officially take over the founder’s “baby”. The Non-Negotiable Paperwork: Why you must discuss the “no-fun” topics—like buy-sell agreements and key person insurance—while you are still in the honeymoon phase of partnership. If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full show notes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s14e8-shownotes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqVzTVu0bks Episode Transcript Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors. Click to show transcript 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: The Intentional Pivot: How L.A. moved from business management and promotion to interior design, using his past experience to fuel his current firm’s rapid growth. A Growth Mindset in Action: How Hudson Park Design grew over five times in size by focusing on values, culture, and deep emotional connections with clients. Luxury as Emotion: Why L.A. believes true luxury is defined by a sense of ease and belonging rather than just a price point. AI vs. Human Intuition: Why the personal element and innate human connection will always give designers an advantage over automated rendering tools. If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full show notes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s14e7-shownotes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7reRy5-9Zvc Episode Transcript Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors. Click to show transcript 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: The Volvo Project: How Elissa’s career began by managing a major renovation for her former husband, earning her a resale certificate and her first referrals. The $800,000 Realization: A candid look at the financial impact of “making up” design fees before learning professional billing and forecasting methods. Succession and the Next 10 Years: The special attitude required for a second-in-command to become a potential successor and the shift toward in-house design leadership. If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full show notes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s14e6-shownotes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwHUiEthyuA Episode Transcript Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors. Click to show transcript 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.