Lee Mayor in this side Hustle Spotlight Q&A is Lee Mayor, co-founder of interior design and home decorating company, co-founder. DismantleRead more about how Denver, the entrepreneur -based entrepreneur, changed a side project in a successful brand here. Reactions have been edited for length and clarity.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Henley. Lee Mayor.
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When you started your side hustle, what was your day work or primary business,
I was working in counseling, strategy and finance roles-like a classic post-business-school roles. Often, roles offered high compensation, but other ways were not particularly rewarded for me.
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When did you start your side, and where did you get inspiration for it?
I just moved from New York City to Denver, Colorado and suddenly found myself in a much larger house than my 700 square -foot NYC apartments. I wanted my house to feel like a reflection of me and my taste, but the combination of long working and the frequent inaccessible nature of traditional interior design really slowed me. I began to wonder why there was no service that made your house more economical and fun, so we started an online design service, which used technology to make someone’s house happy and accessiblely designed.
Somewhere, we grew a lot, and we started buying other online household goods businesses, often started by others, who also abandoned highly paid jobs to start their online companies selling furniture to consumers. We are now owned by six consumer-supporting decorations or design brands: Heavenly, Interior Define, Buro, Citizenry, The Inside and St. Frank.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Henley
What were some of the first steps you made to get your business out of the ground?
My sister and I started talking with my friends, family and connections, calibrated our idea based on hundreds of conversations, and conducted a survey, in which insight into about 1,000 people gathered.
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If you can go back to your professional journey and you can change a process or approach to save time, energy, or just a headache, what will this happen, and how do you want you to do it differently?
In the beginning, you should move the needle in vast ways, not to increase. When you start a business, you can think of the first process instead of the first result. You develop all these checklist items because those things are known or counted, but big things are often very unknown.
For example, exclusive product market fit is difficult to detect, so instead, you will worry about your legal structure, which is far more “to know”. It can also put a lot of process for your engineering/customer service or other team without being a single scale customer. These things are easy to do, especially because they are internal controlled, and it will eventually be important, but it will not actually move the needle in large ways that you need to start for the first time. You will finish yourself with things that eventually do not matter at the point.
When it comes to this specific business, you should be particularly challenging and/or surprising that people who come in this type of work should be prepared, but not the possibility?
I don’t think it’s amazing, but it is too much work as most people think it is, and it is not always glamorous work. Sometimes you become lucky and find a business that is an overnight success, but usually it can mean longer for many years. To do so much work without a certain result requires lots of fate of the intestines. To complicate cases, it works at all levels. You are responding to customer service at 2 pm and detecting insurance for your employees by coding the website.
Financial stress can also be real. In many cases, you can get away from a meaningful career in a high compensation event, and it can be before you exit or even pay the salary yourself.
What was your approach to funding? Have you used any specific strategies that can help other founders successfully increase?
First, do not take rejection individually. Some people pick up very easily – they start a company in a warm place at the right time (eg AI!), They are very well connected, or they become lucky. It is easy to think that if it does not go easily for you, then something is wrong with you. It is worth it before receiving about 140 rejections in our first money rally, first yes, it is worth it. For most successful people, there are not really many examples in your life, where you reject many times, and it can take a toll on your confidence. But the reality is that, the early stages of funding can be difficult, and are often greatly affected by outdoor factors. The trick is to try to reject what they are, there is nothing more than that, which is just an investor falling, for now, there is an opportunity to invest.
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I recently entered the world of tennis after not played for many years recently. I have found that Tennis is a mental game, like raising money. No matter how the previous point has gone, you have to brush it and focus on the current game. Like tennis, you have to try to brush the final meeting, regardless of the result, and focus on the current pitch in hand. Therefore, being capable of abdominal rejection can be a real benefit.
You should also find a friend-Find a CEO of a company that completed a uniform size round within the last 12 months, ideally a company that does not run in an analog but competitive place. First, investors are never happy with a company after their initial investment, so their investors are a great place to start a conversation, and they can easily add you. Second, they would know all the active investors that they used to talk in their journey, even those who did not invest, so they can tell you what they see and help you to improve your pitch. Finally, they are great sources of emotional support.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Henley
What does development and revenue now look like?
We are in many millions of millions. We are growing on a double -digit clip and are excited to continue to expand and serve more and more customers in all our brands.
What do you enjoy the most in running this business?
I have had great good fortune to work with incredibly talented people, many of whom have become friends for years, and there is nothing like building a shared goal with those you trust and admire.
Related: I have interviewed over 100 entrepreneurs who have launched businesses of $ 1 million to $ 1 billion or more. Here is some of his best advice.
What is your best piece of specific, actionable business advice?
There is a lot of noise in your day when you start a business, and it can make it feel heavy to learn about the number of things between starting a business and whatever exit. Once you let you go into other voices it gets spoiled: well-meaning mentors who do not know the reality on the ground, the employees who have never scored a company 0-1, investors who have never operated the company.
Take the response, process it slightly, but then filter through your own lens, which is expected to have some tithters for data-based reality. Find out the next most important thing to do, and do not spend too much time to indicate everything that you need to do between and exit now, and all the advice and ideas you get. Originally, just get to work – and keep putting one leg in front of the other in the normal direction. You will be surprised how far you are.
