Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:36:32 · Alexa von Tobel, Nate Berkus, S2
[00:36:32] S1: get everybody. [00:36:34] S0: Exactly, exactly. There's certain things that guess I mean, it's shocking that someone else's opinion can actually be right when you're so convinced it's not, like what? However, when we design for ourselves and on behalf of clients, it's a little bit different, takes a lot longer, it's a little bit more personal in some ways. And so we figured out some ground rules. And I think the first and most important one is that we are not allowed if someone gives us a hard no, you would never survive this, Alexa. But if someone gives us a hard no, we are not allowed to try and sell the other person. You have to walk away. So as much as I loved this chest of drawers that I thought would be perfect in our entry, He was like, I hate it, no. And I can't, that's it, end of conversation. So we just keep going until we find a yes. [00:37:27] S1: Wait, that's amazing. By the way, what a good ground rule. [00:37:30] S0: It's a great rule, because it's so clear, it's so clean, and I love an actionable. So it's like, great, that's the rule, there's no bending it, there's I'm no breaking [00:37:42] S1: not listening to this one all day. [00:37:44] S2: I'm like, I'm giving you [00:37:45] S1: some trouble. But that's such a good rule.
00:37:45 · Alexa von Tobel, Nate Berkus
[00:37:45] S1: some trouble. But that's such a good rule. [00:37:49] S0: Yeah, and it starts with that, and then you know what, it also is I respect him. I respect him so deeply. He's the father of my kids. Watch how he moves through the world, and I trust him. It's a great, amazing marriage. It's a great love story. He's the best guy and we have so much fun. We've moved so many times. We've bought and sold. We've renovated psychotically, but it's our love language. It's a blast. There's nobody I'd rather argue about dishes with than him. And I really do think he's an incredible talent. I knew that ten years ago, eleven years ago when he started his, or twelve years ago when he started his firm. He looked at me and he said to me once, Do you think that I will make it if I do a career, choose a career that is, he already had his design firm, it was in the very early stage, but he's like, do you think I can do it? And I looked at him and I said, I want you to be happy more than anything. If you wanna be a potter, then you should be a potter and that's great. However, if this is your dream for yourself and it has nothing to do with me and you can stake this as your dream, then by all means I think there's nobody I trust more. You're gonna kill it, and he has. [00:39:17] S1: The the keyword there is mutual respect. [00:39:21] S0: 100%.
00:39:21 · Nate Berkus, Alexa von Tobel, S2
[00:39:21] S0: 100%. [00:39:21] S1: It's just... It's it's a really, really beautiful thing. I... We're gonna get to talking about tech and design because you really are in a position to be a thought leader about how that's how that's hitting the world and also all of the things that could worry us about it. [00:39:39] S0: Yep. [00:39:39] S1: But I I wanna take a minute because I picked up a new book that I'm pretty [00:39:42] S2: pumped about, [00:39:43] S1: which will be in all my all my places. And it comes out November 18. Nate, you've written... You've you've done so much in life. What made you write... What what made you put this together? And, also, it's stunningly
00:39:56 · Nate Berkus
[00:39:56] S0: beautiful. Thank you. I didn't want a photo of me on the cover. I wanted it to be really beautiful, sitting on a table or in someone's bookshelf. I wrote Foundations, comes out November 18. I wrote it because it is more, the thought process behind it was also very clear. I wanted to write what felt like a thank you note to anybody who has ever followed me, who has ever bought a bath mat, who's ever enjoyed a TV makeover or seen one of our projects published, and I thought thirty years into this business, I can kind of do what I want. I could put out $150 monograph of all of the fancy places we've designed and beautiful interiors, or I could do like a $50 ish book and just put everything I've learned in the last thirty years and every question I've ever, almost every question I've ever received on a DM on Instagram, back in the days when people used to email Harpo, we kept all that information and I just spit it all back out in a beautifully photographed volume that's divided by area of the home, so you don't have to read the whole thing, but if you're renovating your bathroom or changing your kitchen or furnishing your dining room, you can turn to dining rooms, bathrooms, and there's styling tips. I made the photographers stand and take aerial shots of every coffee table, every mantle, every night table, because I wanted people to see the details the way I see them and start thinking about design the way I think about design. There's a lot of information out there, a lot of it is I find very self serving. This is the opposite. This is me taking a mirror and shining it back on everybody that supported me all these years.
00:41:51 · Alexa von Tobel, Nate Berkus
[00:41:51] S1: Nate, but first of all, you just said something where you're like, I could have done the $150 book, but instead I did. You were a man of the people. You really... Actually, I just... It's like, Nate, should we have Nate Berkus run for president, everybody? [00:42:04] S0: Oh my god. No. Thanks. [00:42:05] S1: You've never been a snob. You pay it forward. You wanna welcome people into design. I just love that about you. Okay. I wanna talk about the future of design. So we are sitting a few years into an explosion of AI. You and I have had many tech talks about what's happening in AI. We're in a really unique moment where now these incredible computers, LLMs are just... They're able to do so much. They are able to copy so much. How do you think about the future of design? And I... I'd love just to get a sense of, like, what are you excited about and, like, what worries you?
00:42:41 · Nate Berkus
[00:42:41] S0: So again, that has not been linear for me. I was initially panicked that somebody could put in, show me a Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent interior, and here's the photo of my room, how do I do it myself? Obviously there's so many industries that are gonna be affected by AI and be rendered obsolete at some point. Consulting, all of that stuff is super scary to me. What I think AI is never going to be able to replace are the relationships that are built With families that we've done three, four, five homes for, where we know their inventory, we know what they loved, we know what sofa or mantle they stood in front of for every Christmas card, we know how to recreate that in an Aspen house or a Palm Beach house or whatever it is that we're doing because we are a family. We have a role that we play, but we are playing a role in that family and there's an intimacy around that that I don't think will be threatened. For math and for people who aren't looking to build relationships with a designer over the last twenty five years, that is a very different scenario. And I have to tell you, I'm really excited about it. I think everybody deserves to live well, and I was excited when Instagram became massive and design inspiration could be found and accessed by everybody. I was excited when Martha Stewart brought Living Well to the general public as the first pioneer in our industry. I think the more people talking about it, the more people that have access to it, the more people that see how design, good design can impact our lives and make us more productive, make us calmer, make us feel again like the best version of ourselves in these beautiful spaces, then bring it on. Am I worried that, you know, sure. Sometimes, you know, it takes a lot to assemble an interior, by the way. It's not just an image that you can copy and recreate. Even if that image has been tailored to you by AI with your top five designers and beautifully crafted visually, What size is it? What fabric is the right fabric that goes there? It be welted? Right. It I mean, there's 68,000 decisions and details that go into every renovation in every room. So, you know, I think the real designers are safe. I think the Instagram editors should probably be a little bit nervous.