Jamie Bush's firm is the biggest it's ever been. He's loving it

34:47So I think with all of that, just – I don't know. Everything just takes a lot longer. It's complicated and it's also gotten so much more expensive. That's a whole other thing. It's quite striking because I know everybody at the beginning was saying, oh, it's a COVID-related thing and there's like a shortage of raw materials and the supply chain and shipping got clogged. But nothing's changed. Like COVID's over. Prices have not gone down, you know, and everything's sort of being readjusted. And we are seeing some projects getting scaled down or even placed on hold because there was an anticipation from some of our clients that prices would have dropped by now.

35:38And, but that's not the case, you know, people are still very busy, really good crafts people are still in demand. So there isn't a pressure to lower prices, even with interest rates being on the higher side. And even with the real estate industry in LA, you know, like in LA and New York, it's sort of dead. But because these projects take a long time, I think we're still on the wave of what was happening during COVID. and things may slow down. Everything's cyclical, but it is sort of shocking that everything is fantastically expensive. And somewhat unreasonably so. At times we recoil to show clients prices of certain things because it's just, I don't know, it defies logic at times.

36:45We're taking a quick break from the show to remind you about Lalloy, who recently introduced Love Lalloy, a commitment to doing good for their community, industry, and the environment. Through this initiative, Lalloy has promoted female education throughout rural India, recently donated a thousand fruit tree saplings, and provided free eye exams and glasses to hundreds of craftspeople. Learn more about these initiatives at laloyrugs.com. That's L-O-L-O-I rugs.com. And follow them on Instagram and TikTok at laloyrugs. And now back to the show.

37:30so i feel like we we we jumped ahead a little bit from you working for for kelly wersler buying the house needing to work on your house and suddenly building this this great big firm for yourself and and i i want to go back just briefly so that you can tell me because you went to school for architecture, but I feel as though without directly saying so, perhaps your firm became much more of an interior architecture firm or an interior design firm. Yes. Yeah. How did you think about that? Was that a conscious move on your part? Did you fall out of love with architecture, Jamie? No. Well, a little bit.

38:18When I had my own architecture firm with two friends, you know we were um uh I wasn't a brilliant architect I wasn't I technically you know I remember doing like foundation details and you know waterproofing details and all these things and I just didn't have the stomach for it I was like oh my god like I'm gonna I just I just can't do it like and and I knew how to do it but my my heart was not in that world and you know and that's part of the profession. You know, you know, you have to know how to build and detail things well. And, you know, a big part of the profession is the technicality, functional aspects of how to make a building stand and shed water and deflect the sun, you know, all of these things.

39:08And I didn't, I wasn't that interested. And also, I wasn't even that good. You know, when you like self-reflect and you're like, you know, there are other people better than I am at this. And I, I don't know why, why, why should I do this at this point? So I, I did, I pivoted into looking at more interiors. When I was at Marmal, I was doing some furniture things for them and I always dabbled in it. And, you know, my family, back to my family again, everybody was, they were all collector, they all had sort of fantastic, interesting homes, whether they're, you know, some were shacks, but an artist shack that was super chic or, you know, and so there was always that in the back of my head.

39:59And I, and I was always interested in just design history in general. And when you look at design history, architects made furniture and, you know, and, and all these designers historically that made furniture might do buildings. And so I don't know. It was like a back and forth. It felt very natural. And then I realized I could be more effective if I did interior architecture with the furnishings. I wasn't so interested in just doing furnishings because I wanted to influence the interior spaces as well. And being trained as an architect, it allowed us to speak on the same level with architects that we work with.

40:40So we could offer up our services to do all the casework and all the millwork details and the lighting plans and sort of all the finishes. And a lot of architects love that because it's hard to do everything, any one of us. And because we spoke the same language, our intention is always not to upstage the architecture. It's to really understand what the architecture is asking for and enhancing it. So it looks like one holistic voice, but half of our practice is interior architecture. So, and most projects that we work on are half and half. You know, we, most projects that we work on, we do the interior architecture and the interior design, which is what we really prefer.

41:29And, you know, the nice thing about that too is that more and more projects were hired first. So we're hired first and then we put together the entire team. So we interviewed the architects, we narrowed down the architects, we narrowed down the landscape designers, the AV consultants, the lightning designers. And it's been super fun because then, you know, and we have several projects like this, then we get to assemble a team of people, one that we want to work with, but also that work well together because sometimes you're just thrown into this mix and not everybody is simpatico. And so, I don't know.

42:11That's been so rewarding because then we get to do lots of different things. So, your firm has grown, not enormous, but it's the biggest it's ever been for you, it sounds like. Yes? Yes. We have 23 people now. Yeah. I think it was just a very slow and steady incremental growth period. During 2008, we lost everyone. We were down to eight people, probably eight or nine people. And then 2008 hit, we were down to my bookkeeper was part-time. We had an intern with us part-time. And that was it. There was no one. Yeah. And then from there, we just slowly, you know, sort of managed and slowly grew again.

43:01And I think there were some seminal projects where we had to, we needed more help for certain. And then at a certain point, the office ran better when we had three design teams. They were smaller design teams at first, but where each design team had their own projects and there were three leads. And that seemed to be a sweet spot for us where two wasn't enough, but those teams have grown themselves. And then we also slowly separated purchasing from the teams. So we ended up getting a lead purchaser and more people in back of house, more people for accounting and for press and special projects.

43:55And so, yeah, it just sort of grew to 23. We're actually looking for another person right now. and also we're doing some bigger more complicated projects like we're doing a hotel right now which requires you know a lot of people and so um yeah but we've been really fortunate and and it's uh the good thing about the size that we have now is that if we lose a project like we just had a project um go on a permanent hold which was a good size project in the office we have enough work to then just pivot where we always try to have a little, a little bit too much in the sense of inevitably, like we had another project go on hold because of the city issues for like eight months.

44:48So like, you know, you're, you're in it and it's going ahead and all of a sudden something stops. So like we've tried to manage the office in a sense of having enough flexibility where like, Like we don't have to lose people if a project or two stops. And I think that's important for the security of the staff, you know, where it's not a fickle thing where like all of a sudden we hire and then you're like go. And so, you know, we've been fortunate enough to like have enough work to to have that balance because, you know, every day is different and, you know, things come and go. And it's important to me, you know, we have people in the office that have been there for a very long time.

45:34And the sustainability of the office and for people's lives and careers is just as important as the clients. You know, it's keeping this office family, you know, going and happy and in a place that they could thrive and make a career of. You know, we have some people in the office that have been there for 20 years. And so, you know, that's so important to manage as well and their expectations and, you know, the duration of things. And so that size office has become that sweet spot. It's always a balance act. You know, when you're small, you could be super flexible, but then you might not have all of the benefits in place or the proper, I don't know, insurance policies.

46:28And, you know, you just don't have the bandwidth or the overhead that you can sort of really manage and or vice versa. I have friends that have a firm that's like 40 people, and that's almost like a corporate structure. And so this size feels like the right size for us, at least for now. The project that got put on permanent hold, was that apropos of our conversation earlier about what things were costing? Two got put on hold. So one got put on hold because of the cost constraints. and um and it wasn't so much of a thing about you know the clients you know could have done it if they had the means they couldn't wrap their head around the logic of the pricing based on the value of the what they would build you know there and so you know that's a very like smart logical place to be.

47:31I don't operate from that sense. I'm like, you know, you're like, just build it, then you get to live in it and it's beautiful. You're going to have this beautiful house. What's to think about? Yeah. So, but that's why I'm not rich. So, so it totally makes sense. And that might happen at another time, but for the foreseeable future, yeah, the pricing came in. That's really one of the first ones. Another, another project I've put on hold because the uh, regulate city regulations. It's not even a big house, but the, some weird basement calculation got put over the edge as far as like the square footage allowable in this one municipality.

48:09And, but the red tape that they've had to go through to like reorganize like this staircase going to the bay. I mean, it was just ridiculous. That's been like eight months or something. Um, so, you know, any number of these things, you get thrown wrenches, you know, all the time. And, And just the working in places like Los Angeles or New York, you know, the logistics of things that you have to go through are so complicated. And it's not just urbanisms, you know, even in rural communities, there's like in a lot of these gated communities, you know, things just get so highly regulated. It just takes time.

48:49It's difficult to navigate. I want to ask you about collectible design because it seems like it's such a big thing and everyone's talking about it and clients seem to be spending lots of money on it. I mean, is it this great big thing? Is it something that clients are paying big bucks for and are really interested in and is it driving a big part of the industry? It's for some. We have some clients very, very interested in collectible design. And where they are interested, they're interested in the makers and they're interested in actually collecting pieces and knowing more about it and going to design shows.

49:33And Design Miami was just in LA and we had a lot of clients going through. We had some clients fly in for it. It was great. And I think it was really great for Design Miami to be here. It was a big showing. So the answer is yes, some of our clients are willing to spend significant amounts of money on collectible design and other clients have no interest whatsoever. And it's not because they don't have the money to buy it. We have one client who – and everybody is so different. We have one client we've been working on. They're home for maybe six years now. and they're interested in historical mid-century pieces.

50:22Not necessarily conservative. It could be an unknown maker. It doesn't have to be purvey or genre or something like that, but it's what appeals to them. They have contemporary art, but I'll preface that. They have a little bit of collectible design, but they're not willing to spend$300 ,000 or$400 ,000 on some new maker of some fantastic thing. They don't understand that. And then we have other clients that spend very little money on furniture, just in general. They don't understand collectible design or historical collectible design or they want nice furniture that's comfortable, that's mid-range in price.

51:13Even like we had one house that we did that was a very, very expensive house and they spent almost nothing on furniture because they didn't find the value of that. Well, so what do you do in that case? When a client says they don't want to spend a lot on furniture, what's your go-to if that's the case? Well, you know, this house, they ended up selling the house, but the house sold for, it was in the$60 million range. I can't remember exactly. It was very expensive. $60 million and they didn't want to spend money on furniture? No, no, no. The furniture budget for the house, and it was a big house.

51:50It was like 19 ,000 square feet. I think the furniture budget was like$1.2 million. dollars. But when you factor in taxes, shipping, storage, installation, markup, there was West Elm in that house. There were a couple of good things in the house, but none of that furniture was very expensive. But there were a lot of very affordable, decent quality things that looked good, but it wasn't what they were interested in. And you can't judge them on that. It's just - No. They didn't see the value of that for them. But then other people will do a little house where they'll spend a fortune on every single thing is good and interesting.

52:37And it doesn't have to be expensive, but thoughtful or layered. But I think the big thing for us with collectible design is that we're very interested. It's, again, uncharted territory. Sometimes it's very difficult to sell a client on an idea of buying this light fixture for$180 ,000 that isn't tested in the market. There's not necessarily a history of resale for these things. And we do have clients asking, oh, well, am I going to get a return on my money on this? And I flatly say, probably not. I don't know. You know, maybe some of these makers will have that, you know, but, you know, we have to be honest with people where like, we don't know, you know, they might double their money, but they might lose 90 % of it.

53:33You know, it's hard to know. And we always tell them, look, you buy this because you love it. You don't buy it because it's a good investment. I'm not in the business of investments. You know, if you want to buy something and you think you want to park your money there and you think it's going to give you a return, that's your decision. But we're in the business of selling an aesthetic and something that hopefully you'll love and want to spend time around. If you make money over time with it, that's great. But we never upsell clients to be like, this is a great investment. you know, you're getting in on it on the ground floor.

54:17On the ground floor. No, no. It's like, it's not about a short uptick in the margins that month. I don't care about that. It's about like having repeat long-term clients and that's half of our business. And so I would rather make no money on something or make less money on something, but have a happy client that keeps coming back than, you know, making a quick, like higher end sale, you know, just for the short term. Yeah, no, no, it makes great sense. So I want to ask you a couple of things that have been in the news lately. First up, the mansion tax in LA. Does that matter for your business?

55:01So those who are not familiar with the mansion tax, there is a, in the city of Los Angeles, a new ordinance has gone through for houses over a certain value. So houses over$5 million get a certain tax and houses over$10 million get another tax. And basically this mansion tax is to fund the homeless housing crisis in Los Angeles. And so it's well-intended. It has somewhat crippled the real estate market. And I sit on a business council of peers, some of which are real estate developers, real estate people, family wealth people. But it's an industry-wide sort of agency. And that's one of the factors that has crippled the real estate market.

55:59and because it's hundreds of thousands of dollars on each sale, essentially the sellers are going to tag it on to the price some way. They're not just going to give that money up, but it has really created somewhat of a stranglehold on that. And the expected revenue of that, there were predictions done by the city of LA of how much money that was going to bring in. And it brought in a fraction of that because it's stagnated the industry. But the biggest problem I have with it is that because housing the homeless in Los Angeles is a staggering amount of money. So they did these audits and you could read about it, but basically, on average to house a single person, it's like$700 ,000, which is extraordinarily expensive.

56:51Some of these analyses brought it up to$800 ,000, but it doesn't even matter. If it's$400 ,000,$500 ,000, you could buy a beautiful home in Denver for like a half a million dollars. It's just outrageous. But because it's a government-run agency, it has to tick all these boxes, has to be labor and all these things. If it was run by the private sector, you could house these people for a fraction of that money and then that that mansion tax at least would have some teeth at least like the money would be well spent and you could sort of justify it but it it actually enrages me that there's this mansion tax that's hurting our industry and then the money is used ineffectively and so I just uh it it's government bureaucracy and it drives me bananas.

57:45And I know it's all well-intended, but it doesn't work. And so that's my rant. And yet the people voted for it again, right? Yeah, yeah, they did. Well, it was going to be overturned. So there was a motion put on the block to overturn it and it was turned down, yeah. But there's lobbyists, there's all these people that will put commercials on that sort of, they're like, tax the rich. And sure, that sounds great in theory, but unless people educate themselves and read about it, they don't understand the nuances of things. And in my opinion, it's not helping what it's intending to help. I think it's overall hurting the industry as a whole and not really helping with the housing crisis.

58:37So next issue up in the news a lot now, suddenly. So the markets have become convinced that interest rates are going to be coming down faster and perhaps more dramatically than we had thought. Okay. So let's say interest rates come down a full percentage point by the end of the year. Is that going to make a huge difference to any of your clients or projects that you have going on? Do you imagine that having an impact on the LA housing market in general? What do you think? I mean, it's not going to have any direct influence on our clients other than having more confidence in the general economy and sort of real estate values in the city.

59:24You know, most of our clients won't be affected by that, but it's more of a confidence thing. But the funny thing is, and I talked to a friend about this recently, interest rates are high compared to what they were. But if you look historically, it's not that high. My parents had a real estate company for four decades. She reminded me in the 80s, interest rates were skyrocketing. I mean, like, you know, 9%, 10%, 12%, like just like fantastic rates where like it would just be, people couldn't even imagine. So people have a short-term memory with some of these things where like, I get it comparatively interest rates are high, but historically it's not choking.

1:00:13So it's not going to really affect us, but I do think it would help. It would definitely help the industry in general, the real estate industry. you know, there's so many realtors in LA and they're, they're struggling, you know, it's just stagnated. So I think it definitely would spur the econ, that economy in general and all the economies. I feel like the housing industry, all of that stuff, any type of borrowing rates, it's going to be more favorable for our industry, of course, but, but is it going to have a huge effect on our clients? No. They're sort of sheltered from small - From the harsh realities of the world.

1:00:58Yes. They are. But the crazy thing is that the small fluctuations like this affect everybody, all of us day to day, except them, because they can weather the storm. It doesn't matter. They're hedged from small fluctuations in the market. They look at their family offices look for the long term of all of these things. Yes. Yes. Okay. Okay. So we're getting to the end here. And I wanted to ask you, you've been in the industry for a while and seen lots of different sides of it. If there was one thing you could change, what would it be? What does the design industry need to do differently? I would change the education requirements and degrees for interior designers.

1:01:55So I would prefer a four-year education for an interior designer rather than a two-year, which it's not always two-year, but some are two-year programs. and I think I would like to see the interior design education more modeled off of some other countries. Like we have a man in our office from Australia and his interior design education was a four-year degree, but it was also a lot of interior architecture. So coming out of school, he was able to work on commercial buildings, hotels, larger retail projects. Like they're basically taught as interior architects and interior designers. And it's a much more rigorous program.

1:02:47And that's what we look for in our office. And it gives you the freedom to speak the same language and sit at the table with everybody else who you're going to encounter in this industry and have a voice. And I find a lot of people that haven't had that type of background only can dabble and sort of work in a certain sort of with certain parameters and they don't have the experience or the confidence or the just the education to have a bigger voice at the table. And I think as an industry, I want to have just as much stay at the table as the architect or as the builder. And yeah, we do at times, but I just find we've been so fortunate because we're treated as an equal or we're the one running the projects.

1:03:42And given the space and the respect because we know how to build and we know how to navigate the whole industry, that's what I would change. Okay. Well, yes. No, a lot of people are going to love that answer, Jamie. That's going to win you a lot of friends in the design education field. Okay. Finally, tell me what's keeping you excited these days. Tell me about something that you're obsessed with. One artist who I've been looking at more and more and obsessed with is this artist named James Brown, who was a painter, multimedia artist. Tragically, he and his wife died a few years back in a terrible car accident.

1:04:26But he was based in Merida. and um and uh ironically i i came to get to know him from friends who were friends with him i never met him and but i sort of recently become somewhat obsessed with his work and i bought a book of his that's really like a folio that's a beautiful sort of collection of imagery of pieces that he's made and things that have influenced him photographs that he's taken that is such a I think it's what I aspire to if that makes any sense of like this total creative freedom of expression and putting together this um this artistic book that is almost like a string of consciousness of things that he made or loved or things that has inspired him that's loosely bound and just a beautiful object.

1:05:31And I recently was able to buy two pieces of his at auction, these random objects. But I go on these sort of deep dives and sort of search for things. and and it's funny because it it becomes I get attracted to things that have some type of history with myself if that makes sense so I have friends that knew him and collected his work and have his work in his in their houses and I see that and then it just I don't know it brings me closer to my friends and also like because I want to get to know who this person was and and what's the book called that you that you bought it's called orb orb it was an art book um and you know one way to see his they had a beautiful home in merida that um tim tim street porter photographed in a book of theirs on merida so there's a book that tim's reporter and his wife annie kelly you know they do all these books for rizzoli they're like um uh on on different houses and different um um places in the world but that one was done on merida and i i think his house is on the cover it has a big disc i think a yellow disc on the cover but but that's an easy place to sort of find his environment they lived a very beautiful life um a very aesthetic life and and um but yeah i i feel like i have more of a connection with him just getting to know his work and and uh and how he lived, really.

1:07:04They lived a very charmed, poetic life. And you mentioned Tim Street Porter, and we didn't even get to talk about Tim Street Porter and the huge role that he plays in your discovery, in a way, right? Yeah, it's true. Early project in his photography, right? Very quickly, what Dennis is referring to is that my first project I ever did on my own, I was my goal was to get it published in the LA Times and at the at the time LA Times was sort of still a big deal and um they had a magazine section like the New York Times and I saw that Tim Street Porter photograph for them I didn't know Tim but I saved up all my money and I hired Tim to photograph the house hoping that he because nobody knew like who I was and but but Tim had a name and hoping that I could get it published.

1:08:01And it worked. And Tim published it in the LA Times. And that was like my first big break. So he's a friend and I've known Tim for years and such a dear person. But he definitely was very influential in the beginning of my career. Absolutely. And we talk all the time about the importance of investing in good photography, and right and here it is yep he he helped to he helped to launch your career okay we've been talking for far too long but before we before we go jamie what is left undone for you when you think about oh when i because we talked about oh you want to do build from the ground up projects if you ever really get the time.

1:08:49Is that really what's on your mind most about what you still want to do? Or is there something else? I mean, I paint and I draw and I always have, but I hopefully will be having a show of these drawings that I've been working on for years at a gallery that's maybe coming up soon, which was great. But I'd like to do more of that. That's a totally different offshoot. So, but that's something I like. It's just a time factor, you know, to make time for that. And so, yeah, I would like to make more art. And show it and share it. And show it. Yeah, yeah. I've never really, like, it started because with projects that I couldn't afford a lot of art with, I would just make it because it's just cheap.

1:09:48And it would fill that gap, you know, because I was cheap. But then it sort of grew into, I would get commissions for these paintings and doing that for a while. But then I just, I haven't done so much lately, but it looks like I'm having a show of these drawings relatively soon. Well, now you're very vague about this. I mean, are you having a show? I am. Yeah. It's, it's with a gallery. I am having a legitimate show of these drawings. It's just, I put it off cause I just haven't had time to sort of get it together, but, but that's coming. So we don't have a hard date on that. No, no, no. I know.

1:10:26It's summertime soon. I keep putting it off, but that's happening. And then, but I, I do, I want to do more product furniture and fabrics And I'm starting to do a little bit more of that. But a lot of it, it's just, it's time. You know, I don't like rushing into things. And I'm a little slow when it comes, methodical and sort of slow when it comes to things. So, you know, we have a rug line coming out relatively soon. But I think I started it three years ago. Because it just, I don't know. It takes time to do things that you really believe in and care about. And I think that's good. You know, I don't like rushing things.

1:11:05So, yeah. For me. Okay. So we can look for the rug collection and maybe we'll see some art of yours hanging somewhere in the gallery. Soon. Okay. Yes. Soon. All right. Well, I'm so thrilled to get to talk to you and I so appreciate you taking the time. Yeah, no, no. This has been so, so lovely. Thank you so much, Dennis.

1:11:32Thanks for listening. If you'd like to keep up with the latest design industry news, visit us online at businessofhome.com, where you can sign up for our newsletter, browse job listings, and join our BOH Insider community for access to online workshops, a free print subscription, and much more. If you have a note for the podcast, drop us a line at podcast at businessofhome.com. If you're enjoying these conversations, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps others to discover the show. This show was produced by Fred Nikolaus and edited by Michael Castaneda I'm Dan of Scully Thanks again for listening And I'll see you next week