Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:25:34 · Alexa von Tobel, Nate Berkus
[00:25:34] S1: And knock it out, knock it out. [00:25:36] S0: Knock it out. I mean, it's so satisfying still to this day. And the other great gift I will say, which I'll never tire of, which not a lot of people have ever experienced, is that moment when you're standing with a homeowner hand in hand and their eyes are closed and your eyes are open and you get to say welcome home. Because when they open their eyes, it's like this, it's so powerful and you can see their vision for themselves and for their lives materialized and hopefully better, the slightly bigger dream. So it's just like that I'm not tired of. I could do it for years. [00:26:16] S1: Nate, I remember being on set, and again, was in my 20s, and you know, would get all dressed up and go and have my five minutes, and I remember walking away thinking to myself, oh my god, I never realize how hard someone works running a show. [00:26:33] S0: Oh, it's horrible. [00:26:34] S1: I just, I actually physically could feel, and as somebody who's always been, you know, hard work is my superpower. [00:26:39] S0: Right. Yeah. No one's ever questioned your work ethic ever. [00:26:43] S1: From hard work. And I I just remember walking away and being like, my goodness. Like, of course, there's all the glamour externally, but internally, he works really hard. And I just remember walking away being very impressed by the level of effort that you always put into everything that you do.
00:26:43 · Alexa von Tobel, Nate Berkus
[00:26:43] S1: From hard work. And I I just remember walking away and being like, my goodness. Like, of course, there's all the glamour externally, but internally, he works really hard. And I just remember walking away being very impressed by the level of effort that you always put into everything that you do. [00:27:00] S0: Well, let me let me say something about that because thank you, number one. Not everybody sees that, and no one needs a pat on the back when you're hosting your own national syndicated talk show. [00:27:09] S1: Back when you work really hard.
00:27:09 · Alexa von Tobel, Nate Berkus, S2
[00:27:09] S1: Back when you work really hard. [00:27:11] S0: Well, that's true and it doesn't matter what that work is, the issue with the talk show for me, and by the way, you were amazing and the simplicity that you were able to communicate to me and my audience at the time about financial planning and saving and everything else, I said to my producers before they booked you, could you please tell Alexa von Tobel that I cheated in every math class my entire life, that I would have copied her homework had we known each other, and I said, please let her know what a financial fool I am, so please tell Alexa that she's also teaching me at the same time that the audience is being taught, which is a formula for massive success. And those segments I loved. But I will say this, I didn't like being a talk show host. It wasn't a good job for me. I don't like being trapped in a building, that's not my thing. I need to be out, I need to see stuff, I need to interact differently. I'm not naturally curious. I'm only naturally curious about what I love, so I don't want to hear your chicken recipe, that's not interesting to me. And when you host a daytime talk show, you have to make chicken with somebody every day, at least twice a day and I don't care about that. I wanna clean. I don't wanna cook. [00:28:37] S1: You literally teed up my next question, which is [00:28:40] S2: Yeah.
00:28:40 · S2, Alexa von Tobel, Nate Berkus
[00:28:40] S2: Yeah. [00:28:40] S1: You are so truly design obsessed. And, you know, on on this show, we get to have the most ambitious people in the world. And you have been on the 8,100 list for almost a decade. Your husband is on the list. It... When you really step back and think about design, true design, you are one of the top people on the planet for design. And what is fun is how absolutely obfucking zest you are with design. And everybody, you guys should just know that Nate and I were giggling the other day because literally he wakes up and easily got one eye open to auction markets at all time trying to [00:29:19] S0: Every time. Every... Yeah. [00:29:21] S1: Curate. And you're so authentically obsessed. And my question is, how do you maintain that creativity? Like, you evolve, and I've even looked at your work over years and obviously with your incredible new book, which we're gonna talk about, it's coming out November 18. But how do you maintain that obsession? [00:29:42] S2: What does it look like?
00:29:42 · Nate Berkus
[00:29:42] S0: It's not... You know what? It's absolute zero effort for me. Absolutely. And you know, as the oldest sibling, I have three younger brothers on my dad's side, I have a younger brother and a younger sister on my mother's side. And as they were all coming of age, they would come to me cause I'd already started my company and they'd say like, what do you think we should do? And I remember going to the magazine aisle of our local drugstore and saying, show me what you are interested in, Pull them out. Is it People magazine because you're celebrity obsessed or musician obsessed or whatever? Is it sports collecting? Is it memorabilia? Is it architecture? Is it a medical journal? Is it society, or you wanna read Town and Country? I didn't know. And we would take up the pile of magazines and go through the titles and I'd ask them, Well, what do you love about this? What do you wanna learn more about? Even when no one's paying you. And that for me is really the source of what the constant creativity is for me. I don't just love fabrics or rugs or anything specific like that, I love history. I love culture. I love learning about craft. I like seeing the best thing when I'm standing in Cusco in Peru, I wanna go to the local markets where the local people shop, not the weird ones filled with Chinese stuff that tourists are supposed to buy. I wanna know where people buy their pots and pans because I wanna see the placemat and the napkins that they use at home, And so for me, design has just always been a really wonderful way for me to translate what I'm naturally curious about and what I really love. And the collecting aspect is so sick, like I'm such a basket case around it, that I would way rather have some object for the home, a set of dishes, a beautifully crafted photo frame, a vintage lamp than anything else. Very It's funny... I remember when I met Julianne Moore for the first time and she was doing the Bottega Veneta campaign, we were at a dinner for Tomas Maier, who was the designer at the time. We were seated next to each other and we started talking and she was like, Oh, I don't want jewelry and I definitely don't want clothes. I want French furniture from the 1950s. And I was like, and I want to marry you. Like, you and I... Like, you're gonna...
00:32:19 · Nate Berkus, Alexa von Tobel
I hope you're making a lot of money on the movies because now I'm gonna send you links all the time from these weird auctions, which I do. So there's relationships built on shared interests and I love the world of design. I'll never run out of ideas or I'll never stop learning, and I think that that's also something really special about it. [00:32:43] S1: Nate, my head just exploded because that is literally the best answer, which is it is effortless for you. [00:32:50] S0: Effortless. Don't even think about it. [00:32:52] S1: I... And I actually... That feels like my love of entrepreneurship. Like, it is... I I would do this for free. You don't have to [00:32:59] S0: You're fascinated by it. [00:33:00] S1: I am fascinated. I will spend all the time thinking about how to figure out how to stand it up, and I call it... Like, it's my playset. It's my intellectual playset. I'm just playing. Yep. [00:33:11] S0: I totally get it. It... They're your Legos. Companies are your Legos. [00:33:14] S1: Actually, they're... That's an inside joke, everybody, because my son is psychotically obsessed with Legos. [00:33:22] S0: He's actually a master builder. Our sons are the same age, in the same class, and our sons both are obsessed with Legos. The difference is that I go to pick up Oscar from Alexa's house and there's like [00:33:38] S1: It's a problem. [00:33:38] S0: The Great Wall Of China has been built out of Legos and runs through the entire living room. I'm like, Wait, Cashel, how did you do this? He's My