Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:02:10 · S2, Alexa von Tobel, Nate Berkus
[00:02:10] S2: If you're running a startup, we know things like managing equity and communicating with investors are always top of mind. Carta has built a connected suite of tools that over 40,000 companies use to do just that. Their platform of software and services helps you lay the groundwork so you can focus on building. To learn more or get started, visit carta.com. [00:02:30] S1: And with that, I'm so excited to welcome my friend, Nate. Nate, first of all, have fun. I'm so excited to do this with you, having known you for a long time and just so inspired by you on many levels. I wanna I wanna start from the beginning. I wanna dive into your origin story. So... But first, welcome. [00:02:48] S0: Thank you. I love being with you. You know that. You and I are usually, like, in the corner of a cocktail party being pretty badly behaved, so I feel like we're very professional today. [00:02:58] S1: Yes. This... Like, we will bring our professional selves. [00:03:01] S0: I'm trying really hard. [00:03:02] S1: Yeah. I I will try really hard too. [00:03:04] S0: Okay. Great. [00:03:05] S1: So, Nate, I wanna go back to the beginning. You grew up in Hopkins, Minnesota, and you and I both have Midwestern roots, which is one of the many things I love about you. Where did you fall in love with design? I mean, I know your mom, fun fact, Nancy was, Nancy Golden was a designer who also appeared on HGTV. But where did this love and obsession of design come from?
00:03:31 · Nate Berkus, Alexa von Tobel
[00:03:31] S0: So my mom's family was all East Coast based originally, all from the suburbs of Philly, and they cared. My grandmother's house was sort of assembled. My family on that side had a furniture reproduction company that was French provincial furniture and English brown furniture. And so I was really always around it. And then my mom, when she divorced my dad, I was two, she was 22, and my father got divorced and she put herself back through design school and was always around, I was just always around it, to the point where I would come home from visiting my father in California and my room would be in a different part of the house, completely redecorated, took new wall covering, new everything and I'd be like, well you moved my room? But our house growing up was a lab and my mom had a very decent business as most of her friends were housewives and my mom had clients and she was lugging those heavy wallpaper books around and bringing what her kind of vision was to the Twin Cities, which as you know, is not by anyone's definition ever considered like a design metropolis. So it was funny because we were that family who dressed a little different, lived a little different, And we ate the same though, Dairy Queen and the State Fair of Minnesota. Those were check check, still my favorite restaurant worldwide. [00:05:13] S1: DQ, love me. [00:05:15] S0: Yep, yep. DQ. It's the best. [00:05:17] S1: It's the best.
00:05:17 · Alexa von Tobel, Nate Berkus
[00:05:17] S1: It's the best. [00:05:18] S0: So I would say it was exposure. And I think what I really do credit my mom at a very early age, which is something I still do today, both with her and with my company, is that weekends were spent at multi dealer antique malls and auctions and estate sales. And it was all about having things and searching for things that had real value, both aesthetically and monetarily at the best price and finding stuff that no one else had. And I am still in pursuit of that at 53. [00:05:51] S1: Which I can attest you deeply are in pursuit of that at 53 still. [00:05:57] S0: No, 100%. There needs to be a counseling program for how deeply I am ingrained in the auction and secondary market world. [00:06:06] S1: I love it so much. One thing I wanted to make sure I said. So you studied French and sociology at Lake Forest College. That is such an interesting academic mix for a designer. You studied people and culture influence. If you think about that, how do you think that that created any foundation for how you think about design?
00:06:31 · Nate Berkus, Alexa von Tobel
[00:06:31] S0: Well, I've always believed that design, you know, thirty years into my company, I've always believed that design is part magic, part alchemy, and a lot of sociology. I've always believed philosophically that my job as designer is to dream a slightly bigger dream for the client than they can dream for themselves. And so that's where this sort of skill set of scale and sourcing and all of the things that go into properly and effectively assembling a beautiful interior kind of stem from, but it's also my responsibility to look at someone and meet them and pretty quickly understand not only who they are, but where they've been, and also most importantly, perhaps who they aspire to be, because a successful room, when you stand in a successful room, whether it's yours or someone else's, you feel the best version of yourself, and that's not an effortless process, it's a deeply thoughtful, very layered process, but that's the alchemy of it, and without the sociology background, without understanding what Susan Faludi was writing, what Jane Goodall was studying, even though that was more anthropology, but still it set me up to think through how to very quickly get people to feel comfortable around me. And that's really what it's all about and what it remains all about. [00:08:13] S1: That's so well said, and by the way, what an incredibly authentic skill set to being able to then be set up as a really powerful designer. Nate, one thing I did not fully know about you was you started Nate Berkus Associates at age 24. [00:08:34] S0: I did.
00:08:34 · Nate Berkus, Alexa von Tobel
[00:08:34] S0: I did. [00:08:35] S1: I was a dropout who started my first real company at 23. I didn't know we had that in common, which is that we actually were jailbreak early and starting things. What gave you the confidence to do it so young? I mean, I was just a misfit.
00:08:53 · Nate Berkus
[00:08:53] S0: Same. No, completely. I was too, Alexa. I mean, truth is that I was working for Leslie Hindman Auctioneers in Chicago. We called it the no dental insurance, but beg your parents for a pair of Gucci loafers and wear them every day, so we all thought we were super fancy in our navy jackets with gold buttons and our shoes with the buckles on them, but we had no money and we were making no money, and that's still to this day is pretty much the auction industry, unless you're in the top one percent of executives and investors. So as a recent graduate and even an intern working in auctions in Chicago, I made $780 every two weeks and I was always late to the Monday morning meeting. And when you were late to the Monday morning meeting, which was right at the front door of the auction house, the entire staff of 70 people or whatever were standing there, and Leslie would go through the sales coming up and the client issues and damages and all the things, and I was always like four or five minutes late to the 8AM meeting, and her rule was that you had to walk. You walked in in front of everybody, so it was always mortifying anyway and everyone knew, but you had to give her $5 if you were late. And so every Monday I gave her $5 and that was my lunch money. And I went into her office one day and she lit a Salem menthol. She smoked prison cigarettes. And I sat on a radiator because I thought we were really good friends, and we were. And I said to her, I think I'm going to quit my job. And she said, But I was grooming you. I think you really have what it takes. I'm like, You say that to so many I don't buy that at all. Will you support me if I start a design firm? That's really what I think I should be doing. And she said, Well, it's really scary out there. And I said to her, Yeah, but I make $780 every two weeks. How hard can it be to make that?