Greg Bradshaw, Adam Farmerie, Kristina O'Neal, and William Harris, AvroKO

17:07Adam Farmerie:So it was our own living lab and university. It was amazing.

17:12Kristina O'Neal:To some degree as well. We were just, you know, we did the first one public and we thought, okay, great. Like, that's it. We're just going to go on and go return to becoming just a design firm again. But after that, you just sort of think, get an itch, right? You're kind of like, well, maybe let's do something else, right? And you don't even think about it. I mean, at some point, we opened, we were counting 19 venues over the course of 15 years. And it's not like it was a grand plan. It was just kind of like, oh, maybe we should do a wine bar next, or maybe we should try this out. And you just kind of get interested in pushing yourself to sort of seek new ideas, new boundaries.

17:52Yeah, I think they really, it allowed us to flex a lot of muscles too.

17:56William Harris:I mean, we kind of have already mentioned it to a certain extent. But, you know, you might just really have this idea that, you know, you're not sure if maybe your client is ready for it. But we're sort of ready for it, you know. And so we can really just flex our muscles a lot. I think it taught us a lot of good skills too. Like not everything worked, you know, we had to adapt a lot of the time. And so we learned a lot of great skills, I think for business, just in general from this, you know, like we opened one restaurant and like the same day that Lehman Brothers collapsed, you know, and that obviously didn't really set the right economic tone, you know, for that restaurant.

18:35William Harris:And, you know, it was an awesome restaurant, great design, right? But we knew that we had to kind of adapt. And so adaptability is something that we learn from the restaurants. So we switched that restaurant into something else that became Saxon Parole. And so that trying to pivot, know that you tried something and maybe it didn't work out so well, but then looking for an opportunity and understanding what the market is at that moment in time, and then being able to use what was successful but then tweak it, became things that have just really served us well, I think, through the rest of our history.

19:11Adam Farmerie:We're really lucky. It gave us a lot of respect at the tables with our clients, too. Like, oh, I've been that. I've seen that. I felt that pain. This is how we solved it. How might you think about it? And then we worked, at the same time, you're working with so many other great chefs and operators. And they've been wonderful to share their secrets and their histories with us. So you're constantly gleaning, and then you're testing those ideas back out in one's own venue so it was this great kind of give and take i remember one ghost donkey you guys like

19:39Greg Bradshaw:actually built that all like the four of you right with your team like there's a lot of hands-on all the the self-propelled up up into our most recent one we paint we do all the staining we are doing the bars so it's it's good just to be hands-on in the thick of it and doing it uh in a new way each time so that the learnings are there firsthand and it's not there's no distance and so all of the self including ghost donkey all the self-propelled are like that yeah they're like

20:08Kristina O'Neal:little art projects or big art projects right like they're sort of like just get your hands dirty kind of get stuck into it and see what happens it's just we're we're makers at heart we just

20:18Adam Farmerie:can't help ourselves and ghost donkey was amazing because we had it was madam geneva before that if you remember and we had that for approximately 10 years and you know as many of these smaller venues, bars, it gets a little long in the tooth after a while and you want to shake things up and it was a small contained space. So we started slipping things in, in the cover of night, like late nights where Man of Geneva was still operating and all of a sudden this weird Mexican flower might pop up or these, these red string lights would start to pop up with that, but they weren't turned on. So we, but we ultimately turned around the space in five days, I think like a week or so, right.

20:52Greg Bradshaw:For just a small, small bit.

20:54Adam Farmerie:And, and we just, you know, we had an amazing team too. So our bar team and, and the other creatives, uh, with the food and beverage. So we were able to create a new concept quickly and it was a hit. And I think we've, we just opened, uh, our ninth Dallas, uh, yesterday. So from, from, uh, you know, five days painting walls and getting old flowers, uh, it's turned into a little bit of a brand for us. So it's been really fun.

21:18Greg Bradshaw:That's awesome. All right. So talking about building brand, you guys started the four of you, obviously. And now, as I mentioned in the beginning, you have, you know, called 150 team members, five offices. I know a lot of it was organic, but how did you grow, you know, how did you grow and start to really define what Aberco was or is?

21:41Greg Bradshaw:I think somebody mentioned it, but that we didn't have much business acumen. So we invented every single system from a creative place. It wasn't from a place of reading a bunch of business books or anything like that. So one thing that we focused on was to figure out what, at least with the four partners, doing an annual summit and talking about why we, the things that we might want to do that would be a desire, a passion, and then also why we might fail. We did both. The personal summit was both angles. And I think that those processes lay the groundwork. And now we do them with our teams and our leadership.

22:20Greg Bradshaw:And we're able to sit with them and talk about the same kind of ideas. But it's so generative. It's like an organism. It doesn't happen with 10-year plans. It really happens in an annual basis. And it's based on desire and being very honest and truthful, I think about what we can and can't do. And that has, I think it's incredibly rare to be together for this long. And I think part of that has come from being honest in these annuals where you can say, I hate this. I love this. I'm afraid of this. This hurt my feelings. I think this is amazing. So it's pretty broad where we go with it. It's almost like marriage counseling.

22:57Greg Bradshaw:That's what I said, like our four-way marriage. It's very deep. So I think that helps. If you can parlay that into business, you can make models that are newer models than traditional models, which might have been hierarchical. They have a lot of steps to them. They have a lot of rigidity. We just don't work like that. So I think the growth has come from that organism place.

23:17Kristina O'Neal:It's sort of like what you were saying, like you're taking care of each other, right? Like Christina makes these things called magic papers, and we could talk about magic papers for like an hour. But it's basically like listening to each other and saying, what's important to you? And what do you, how do you see yourself living your life? So for example, you know, the restaurants came out of those magic papers. It was just kind of like, well, this is important. I was saying, oh, it's important to me. And so everybody rallied around it, right? And then a couple of years later, you know, William was saying, well, I think it's, I really want to spend a bit more time in Asia.

23:51Kristina O'Neal:And I think there's an opportunity for us to spend some time there and actually build a business. I'm willing to do the travel. And so we said, great, that's important to you. We will support you to do that. So the office in Bangkok is now 60 people. It was just two people in Hong Kong in a small apartment in 2006. And 20 years later, that office has grown. But it wasn't like, oh, we're going to have some world domination idea. It was just like, no, I kind of need this for myself. Or Greg was saying, oh, I really need to kind of move to San Francisco. Great. Let's do that. Or I said, hey, I think it'd be really, I want to spend more time in London because I lived there when I was younger.

24:26Kristina O'Neal:And it was like everybody sort of rallied around and said, yes, let's do that. So the offices weren't, as Christina was saying, they were more about taking care of each other and not about growing a business.

24:37Adam Farmerie:We have passions that we build a business around, not the other way around. So it's interesting.

24:41Greg Bradshaw:Which I think is really rare, right? That's weird.

24:44Kristina O'Neal:I don't think it's a good business idea.

24:46Greg Bradshaw:I think you can say rare and not weird, but yes, you can say it's weird too.

24:50William Harris:I think different places have held specific allures. for us, you know, and, and I think they tie together quite a bit too, you know, again, William, you know, had this, this itch of Asia, you know, and then that helped bear out a lot more, a lot more work there, you know, it was like started though from a passion, right. And, you know, the West Coast had an allure for me, both like project wise, you know, like the desire to kind of do more resort work or, you know, and like, and there was a lot more of that out there. and so there were and you know and then just like you know the west and the and the nature and the you know like you know just being a little bit more attuned to that and so that was an allure for me and then you know like europe as you know like the history there and like working on projects you know we love these projects where you know you can kind of like adapt you know something historical and i and i think that was i mean it's an allure for all of us quite honestly but you know And I think specifically for Adam, that was quite an allure for opening the London office.

25:58Kristina O'Neal:At some point, Greg was saying, oh, I really want to be building more of the furniture we're designing because I just like, I love to design furniture, but I also like to tinker and build. So what started out as just like literally going to a shop in Brooklyn and physically building a couple pieces of furniture turned into a company in which we were building furniture for 30, 40 % of our projects. And it all started from this passion that Greg had to actually physically build furniture. And, you know, five years later, all of a sudden, it was like, oh, that's actually a company. There's a business there.

26:32Greg Bradshaw:I'll just add one note that not all of the companies succeed. So you can have a passion and say, great, it's fantastic. We all support you. But you're supporting through the successes and the failures.

26:44Kristina O'Neal:You don't want to talk about the clothing company?

26:45Greg Bradshaw:We have so many. We have so many failures. Isn't there a uniform company? We have had so many today, so you can't even count. But I think because it's okay, part of the adventure has been trying things on and supporting each other through the good and the bad. And also supporting our staff when they have a longing that they want to go do is doing our best to support that too. So it's extended out, and it's not just the partners. I think everybody's in it now in that business model. Is this the same way? Because you also have another arm, Brand Bureau, which is branding and allows you to do different types of non-hospitality projects.

27:20Greg Bradshaw:Was that also a passion? Yeah, at that time, it was something that came up where I wanted to engage with bigger brands that might need strategy and they might need branding, but apart from Avraco's agenda. And so we began that as a way to work with different kinds of brands and be more involved on a strategic level. We weren't doing strategy prior to that. So, yeah, and that's been all in many, many different places. But that was one of my initial, what if? Couldn't we do something amazing?

27:52Kristina O'Neal:We all said, sure. Let's see what happens. What's the worst thing that's going to happen, right? Like, worst thing that's going to happen is you're going to fail. And then you just pick yourself up and do something else.

28:02Greg Bradshaw:But I do think that's a really good lesson, right? Is allowing yourself to fail. Allowing yourself to try and, you know.

28:09Kristina O'Neal:Yeah, not everything's going to be rainbows and unicorns, right? Like, you got to have to make some mistakes.

28:16Greg Bradshaw:So how have you grown as leaders? And how have you had to, I don't know, with 150 people, so many offices, like, you have to kind of divvy up who does what. And so how does that work? And how have you grown over the years together?

28:33Kristina O'Neal:I think the biggest thing is, you know, it takes a village, right? Like, it's not even just the four of us. I mean, we have incredible leaders in our organization, some of whom are here today, who have been with us for 8, 10, 12, 15 years. And so they become sort of part, you know, we become collaborators with them and we go arm in arm with them. It's not, and Christina mentioned this before, it's not very hierarchical. It's more like, oh, we're all in this together kind of thing. And so the leaders that are in each of the studios sit at the same table. It's really important for us that everybody has a seat at that table and everybody has a voice, not just in the design process, but in the actual operations of the company.

29:16Kristina O'Neal:So, again, as Christine was saying, if something's important to them, then it becomes important to everybody. And our success is everybody's success.

29:23William Harris:And the same lessons that we learned working with each other, you know, I think we try to instill and we use the same kinds of collaborative sensibilities with everybody around us. you know, and we get inspiration from our staff and hopefully we provide a lot of inspiration to them as well. And I think that that's just part of the, you know, create as a collaborative, you know, mission that we have.

29:49Greg Bradshaw:I did a podcast, I'm going off script, just FYI. I did a podcast with somebody who used to work for you and she did, I forget her exact terms, but she said that, you know, it was such a great learning their process. And, um, she said that the way that you guys look at a project is like how she's now instilled in what they do moving forward, which, you know, I think speaks volumes for, um, for what you all do, but can you talk a little bit about that process? So like, how do you start, you know, how do you look at something um and then make it become a reality sorry a little curveball um so when we started

30:33Adam Farmerie:it goes way back to how we learned to think and design when we started in university there was a program where it was just the whole school was a concept program so we were in the visual arts program but it wasn't about just making a painting or a sculpture or architecture it was about the concept studio, the idea. So the idea always came first, and then you find out, you understand how to break that apart, get to the heart of the idea, and then what design implement tools are going to help support that. So in any project, that's really important to us, getting to the soul of it, understanding who the clients are, the needs, the deeper narrative that we can pull from that.

31:11Adam Farmerie:So we're incredibly inspired by history, by sense of place, and we've created a series of layered creative process that can tap into different sort of psychological and emotional aspects to bring that to life.

31:25Kristina O'Neal:Yeah, I think that's perfectly said. At the end of the day, we take great pride in the fact that most of our projects don't have a style per se. They don't look like some firms have a style and that's totally cool, right? I think we take great pride in the fact that there's a thread to the projects that we have that tend to be conceptual and narrative driven. and there's an attention to detail and there's a care for the craft of them. But they don't look like each other, right? I mean, I don't think they do, right?

31:59Adam Farmerie:Something really odd we try to throw in, we say think sideways, but just to find something completely unexpected, quirky, a muse that just shouldn't fit. And we also created a do not list. So if we're creating an Asian concept or a particular typology, we take all the obvious tropes immediately and put it on the do not list and cross them out and communicate that to the team. So we've got to be more creative. You've got to find something more interesting, something left of center to make this unique.

32:31Greg Bradshaw:Yeah. And it's something that's always been really important to us is how people feel in the space, obviously. So we have something called hospitable thinking. It's a human needs model where we're looking at how people feel. Do they feel significant when they're experiencing the space? Do they feel safe? Are they surprised and delighted by something that they're experiencing? And maybe most importantly, are they in some sort of synergy with the space? Are they feeling like they're part of it? Do they belong? And I think these kinds of ideas, psychological ideas framed in human needs models are really important to the design process.

33:10Awesome.

33:10Greg Bradshaw:is there a part of the process that you still like love or you know um okay so two questions there one part of the process that you love the most and what is the most challenging part of the job from where you sit today

33:27Adam Farmerie:i think as former owners and operators there's there's nothing that beats excitement of approaching opening day and that could be for a sprawling resort or a tiny bar or restaurant, but because we love the symphony of all the talents and all the people and all the ideas, typically it's been a long collaborative process. It'll be, if not many years, it's certainly many months or close to several years, but to see that all come together, to hear the music start to kick on, to see the staff start running around and setting up the plays, to the final styling tweaks, to seeing, you know, hopefully pleasant looks on all the stakeholders that are within that project and have it come together.

34:07Adam Farmerie:I think that's incredibly exhilarating and nothing really matches that energy. I think we're all a little bit addicted to that. We're a lot addicted.

34:16William Harris:Yeah, I mean, that opening night is certainly, it's like the cherry on top, you know? But I think that we all, I think one of the things that has been a nice collaboration with all of us is each one of us kind of has, you know, a little bit of a superpower, we like to say, you know? And so I think each one of us might have a different way that we might think about that. You know, like I loved just the initial ideas, you know, and like, you know, like real, like everything is just so, you know, there's so ripe with possibility, you know, in the very beginning. And so like that beginning stage is just as exciting for me as like that end stage, you know, and like, sure, call me the architect geek of the group, but you know, like I like sitting down and, you know, sketching out every last little detail, you know, in design development.

35:02William Harris:but you know like every one of us has a different that is your superpower i love this what are your

35:09Kristina O'Neal:strengths and weaknesses let's do this this is fun uh christina is like an incredible oracle i'll start with her because i think i mean honestly so she can figure out how to pull ideas like out of the ether and i think that's partially why she has generally engineered the magic paper process throughout our entire lives and it again it started not just as a company but even before then she was often sort of sitting down and trying to understand how to how to connect the dots for each of us and she does the same thing for the company as well so like it's an incredible superpower to just sort of figure out how these things all connect and then thank you sorry and i just gushed

35:53William Harris:and look i think you know i think adam has this incredible ability of um sort of knowing what's most important you know and like being able to like edit stuff in this very clear way where you're like no I want to hold on to that that's really important he's like that's not going to make the most impact like just kind of like getting to the heart of of what's really important in a design

36:15Greg Bradshaw:yeah I would add to that too I think Adam has a real joy he brings just a tremendous play and joy and this is something that's really hard when you're under stress you're you're trying to get through a project, an operation, something difficult, you know, he'll come in with a lot of joy and play, no matter what it is. I've come into the studio, and I'll hear Adam at one end of the studio making crowing noises, and I'll hear William at the other end of the studio responding. Like, it's madness in there. It's just, it's like a playpen, but I think Adam drives a lot of this just joy and play, so that's...

36:52Adam Farmerie:I've also never seen anyone so excited to go to, like, the 10th community board meeting in a row to try to get some plans through. So that's a, I love that joy serves you well. I really appreciated that. Yeah, really.

37:03William Harris:Thank you. I don't, I never wanted to do that.

37:06Greg Bradshaw:Well, this is why you work so well together. Yeah. I would say too, something about Gregory. He's, we'll sit in meetings and we'll be talking about this idea, that idea, this is going to go here, what we should put this object in the middle. And Greg will have his head down and he won't say anything for 20 minutes and he'll pull up his sketchbook and every idea we just mentioned

37:26Kristina O'Neal:will be sketched poetically three-dimensionally perfect perspective the most elegant interpretation

37:34Greg Bradshaw:of what we all were just talking about and it's just kind of great where he can actually you know take all of that information and pull it into something as poetic as these beautiful line drawings in in real time in 20 minutes you think we actually get annoyed like you're not

37:46Adam Farmerie:paying attention you still think like are you are you with you're with us right and all of a sudden And everything's on paper. It's amazing. You know when I bring out that straight edge, it's all about to happen.

37:56Kristina O'Neal:I think William as well. We can't leave him out. I think he's got an incredible sensitivity to aesthetics that is almost supernatural. I mean, I have to briefly, quickly mention this story where we were doing a project. and he asked the contractor to paint no fewer than 60 samples of the color black on the wall. I think it was closer to 100. But I mean, and each of them, I mean, I looked at it. It was like, dude, just pick one. Like, it's fine. They change a lot when the light of the day. He's like sitting there for hours just being like feeling it. It was just crazy.

38:35Greg Bradshaw:Yeah, he'll be inviting too. He'll be there for two hours just setting the lighting to perfection in each room, each light and how it's going to be in different day parts.

38:45Kristina O'Neal:Remember, we just opened Host in the fall. And at one point, I came in and William was just standing in the space, just sort of looking up. And I was like, what? For like an hour. I was like, what are you? It's almost like Rain Man-ish a little bit. I was like, what's going on here, dude? Like, what are you looking at? He's like, that green is not quite right. I was like, it's fine and we're opening tonight. So like, next thing I know, he's got the paint can out and he's up on the ladder. They repainted it.

39:10Adam Farmerie:It was the wrong green that was up there. So we fixed it. It was good.

39:14Greg Bradshaw:So that's like a strength and a weakness? Yeah, 100%. It's definitely torture. Well, you brought a post on Howard. Tell us, this is your most recent self-propelled project or your ownership. Tell us about that, because I think it's a really interesting concept, and I think it speaks a lot of hospitality and what you all do very well. Yeah, it's our gallery gathering space at 21 Howard Street. It's our favorite street in Manhattan, so we're so happy to get a space there. And it's another celebration, I think, for us to be able to create in a space over a period of time where we can do the artwork, we have a whole bunch of lighting, trolleys, anything that's a tool for gathering we sell there.

40:03but it's more than that.

40:05Greg Bradshaw:We're bringing together interesting people at this intersection of food, wine, art, and design. And when we do our gatherings, we'll get a chef that we love and we'll get an artist that we love and we'll have their crowds come together into that gathering. So it creates an interesting soup. So it's a fun play space for us. It's another one where we did a lot of just late nights, hands-on painting baseboards. it was just a lot of our personal efforts going into that one. And we like to have a project every year where you're just, again, we're hands-on and we're doing the do.

40:41Kristina O'Neal:And there's a bar in it.

40:44Greg Bradshaw:Shocking.

40:44William Harris:Yeah. Well, it's also a place that, you know, we're able to highlight a lot of the, you know, the furniture and lighting that we've developed over the years, you know? So it's a lot, it does a lot. And it kind of, you know, it kind of brings in, you know, different interests. of course it had to have a bar because Adam was part of this you know I think we all like the bar but but you know like it's a it's a nice place to highlight um you know these other collaborations that we're doing with other furniture manufacturers and things like that and we're not it's not meant to throw everything in there you know we're we're kind of curating it to like fit um you know different kind of seasonal ideas that that we're doing in a more artful way and then and it's all about like gathering people together you know and sharing this having a you know having a social space that we can we can meet and and you know hang out with

41:38Greg Bradshaw:the people we love and let's talk so you have diversified your firm in many different ways how do you think that's helped you get to where you are today and really kind of create this all-encompassing kind of company that you want you know that you had thought about at the beginning that wasn't just an interior design firm when we began we didn't have an idea that we would only be i think adam mentioned this but that we would only be one thing we had this kind of private motto of being idea driven non-vehicle specific and part of that is exploration because we want to have the exploration but in terms of the firm at large, I think it's helpful for our clients.

42:21Greg Bradshaw:When we can do everything from F &B strategy to concepting to interior design to furniture design and brand at the end, I mean, it's very all-inclusive. So the ideas don't get lost in the middle. So while we still do those independently, some clients don't go all the way through. I think it's most valuable when we can integrate a more holistic approach. Has there been one project of late that you think really speaks to what you hope to create with Avrico and hope to create with your spaces? I don't know.

42:56Kristina O'Neal:Do you guys have something that's Nuri that just opened recently? That's beautiful. A stunner.

43:01Greg Bradshaw:There's been a lot of beautiful things open recently.

43:04William Harris:Yeah, I think, look, there's been a lot of great, you know, recent projects. I think Nuri is definitely one of those, you know, we had the opportunity to, you know, really, it was a client that really just wanted everything, you know, and it became a great opportunity for us to really sink into a lot of, you know, the just every last detail that we possibly could. And, you know, it's great when we can find, you know, that shared passion, you know, with our clients. And I think we really, you know, we've learned a lot from clients, but, you know, I think we really value, you know, longstanding relationships with clients too.

43:45William Harris:So while Nuri is, you know, one project that was recently completed, you know, I think we're also very, you know, we're appreciative of like projects that we're doing right now as well with like longstanding clients. You know, we're doing single thread is one of our, you know, one of the projects that we're quite proud of from, from a number of years ago, but the, you know, Kyle and Katina Kanahton are, um, are two of the clients along with Tony Greenberg, but we've, we're doing, you know, two more projects with them right now. And just having developed like that, um, you know, such a strong relationship with them, you know, where there's such shared values.

44:26William Harris:I think those, um, you know, we're really excited about these upcoming projects too. And, and this goes across the board with a number of other clients.

44:34Greg Bradshaw:Yeah, and I think that those two in particular, and this is stretched off topic a teeny bit, but out in Sonoma where they live and where Single Thread is and all these projects are as well that we're doing for the future that are going to open soon, Kyle and Katina come over to our land and they bring the whole staff and we do cookouts together there too. So I think a lot of the client work that we're talking about, its relationship becomes this really huge thing beyond the projects. And I know that there's a lot of clients that I know, for instance, Adam works with that are part of that family as well.

45:11Kristina O'Neal:Totally. I mean, Michael Stillman is a good friend of ours. We started doing work with him almost 20 years ago. We just finished a project for him called Twin Tails that we're all incredibly proud of. And I think we've done something like 18 projects with Michael. The guys from Boca, we've done maybe 15 or 16 projects with them. We've got a new project with them opening in Nashville soon. There's the likes of Barry Sternlich with One Hotel. We started working with him in 2007 on a project that never came to life. And then eventually we did the first One Hotel in Central Park. Did the one in LA.

45:49Kristina O'Neal:We're about to open a project in Copenhagen for the One Hotel that we're doing with Norm architects that is going to be a real feat. It's a really beautiful space. And we're working on another one hotel in Rome. So it's sort of like this continuity of relationships of sort of enjoying great operators who care about craft, who really have a desire to sort of participate, as Greg was saying, and collaborate in meaningful ways. And the projects are really meaningful and and beautiful because you kind of have this great dance. You know how to dance together, right? You kind of, it's never stepping on each other's toes.

46:29Kristina O'Neal:I mean, there's, you could probably rattle off. I mean, we're working on a project with Sam Fox right now, a 1230 club in Austin. We did the first one with them in Nashville with he and Justin Timberlake. And, you know, we're starting to talk about even more projects together. So you kind of like, you vibe with, I think we vibe with a lot of our clients in a very special way, as Christina was saying. And it's not just like, oh, we're working together, but like we actually enjoy them. We actually like them.

46:53Greg Bradshaw:We're laughing at what you love. We have for 13 minutes left. I just want to, before I keep asking questions, does anyone have any questions for our esteemed panelists? Oh yes. We have one right here. Okay. Here. What is an idea yet to be realized? I have such a long-term idea I've not realized yet I've been talking about it since my 20s so it's way way way way way long time but there was something I have called elder farm which is just a way to create a village or a community that you can age into that's modern sustainable etc et cetera. Some really interesting ideas now that are available to us that weren't available to us 20 years ago.

47:44Greg Bradshaw:So I've talked to the partners about this endlessly. We're hoping that eventually we'll be able to build this idea, this community. Yeah.

47:55Kristina O'Neal:It's had different names over the years, like it was Avroco Sir La Mer at some point. And yeah, it's somewhere between like co-living and communal, like having individual small spaces, but then having communal spaces that you share with the community. We've come close to doing it.

48:14Greg Bradshaw:We're getting closer. Getting closer.

48:16William Harris:I'm hoping that we can do this on like our own private island somewhere, because I would just love to like design an entire island resort, you know, to just really, like we talk about holistic you know design but you know like throw in landscape design and urban planning in that as well and I think you know like that would just be just a dream. And boats. Boat design. Boat design, yes.

48:43Greg Bradshaw:William, do you have a wish list?

48:46Adam Farmerie:Oh, I've been just dreaming about the Elder Farm as well.

48:49Greg Bradshaw:Oh, okay. You two are on the Elder Farm. Their resort boating.

48:52Kristina O'Neal:No, no, no. I'm in way deep into the Elder Farm as well.

48:57Greg Bradshaw:Any other questions? Oh, Margaret.

49:00Adam Farmerie:Hold on.

49:01Greg Bradshaw:Coming. Running. So I had to step out. I apologize, you guys, for a very, very important client. Liar, liar, pants on fire. So you know I love the three of you.

49:16Adam Farmerie:Greg, I'm starting to love.

49:18Kristina O'Neal:He's more difficult to love. Only because you've just met him.

49:20Adam Farmerie:Yeah, yeah, yeah. It'll take some time, Greg, but you'll get there.

49:23Kristina O'Neal:I'm here for you. My question is for the four of you, and I always joke with Christina like she keeps all these guys in check.

49:31William Harris:For four partners, it's kind of extraordinary. So my question is, there's got to be a good cop in here. There's got to be a bad cop. And then there are probably two of you that scheme against.

49:50Kristina O'Neal:I know, I've been watching way too much TV. Yeah.

49:53Greg Bradshaw:So how do you all work so well together and still love each other and really kind of all live together after 25 years? It's exceptional.

50:05William Harris:What is that structure? Like, do you check in? Is it two against two, three against one? How does it? Did you already talk about that? No.

50:14Greg Bradshaw:So can you give us the dirt on this? Give us all the team. Squid Games question.

50:20Adam Farmerie:Who are we going to throw under the bus here? Well, I think Christina clearly has been the glue for us from the beginning. I think her energy and empathy and perseverance with the three of us, I'm sure we can get a little annoying at times. And I think we all probably have our unique relationships with her. And I know that there are conversations she'll have with the three of us that are tailored to our unique personalities and need states and quirks. And I think that that helps keep things flowing and the communication proper. But we all have a lot of great respect for each other. And because we do bring so many different things to the table, I think we really appreciate that and rely on that and feel.

51:18Adam Farmerie:And because of that, we feel so much safer to take a lot of the risks we've taken over the years and companies and just life moves, etc. So, you know, there can be disagreements for sure. There's probably been an argument or two, but we always hug it out at the end of the day. We never we never hold grudges. We make sure that we can always remember the friendship and what got us into this in the beginning. And we always put the commitment to friendship and our Avroco family first over commercial concerns. So even if there are decisions that might end up being a little painful financial, which breaks a lot of groups apart, breaks a lot of families apart, breaks a lot of companies apart, we always just remember that that's really integral.

52:05Adam Farmerie:So I don't know if that answered it. We all have our own way. You answered it perfectly. yeah well said well said thanks for the tough ones margaret yeah margaret can always rely on you

52:14Kristina O'Neal:where's where's those juicy lob you know softballs oh maybe this will be a softball let's see

52:20William Harris:this is to the oracle casino i actually had a two-part question the first question was what's magic paper and then the second question i had which may tie into that is in regards to when someone comes up with an idea what is needed in order to take action on that and build that momentum to a point where it just keeps going. Great question.

52:42Greg Bradshaw:Yeah, I made the magic papers up. It's completely a construct, but it's a construct we've had since before we formed Avrico. It's generally a way to sit with both in a group and individually sometimes to ask a myriad questions that are very complicated. So if a person hasn't thought about those things yet, which could include things about unmet desires. This is really big. What's an unmet desire? And if the world was your oyster and you could do anything, there were money, time, resources weren't an issue. So they can be questions like that. But I'm really, I think it's very intuitive because it's that person, that moment, et cetera.

53:28Greg Bradshaw:And then when we're doing it together, we document. So we'll sit for three days in a cabin documenting, documenting. And I have magic papers from over the years in each of our handwriting. So you don't know who's taking notes and who's paying more attention to what. But we'll go down the rabbit hole with each other. And it's not just business strategy, which I would probably pronounce that very strongly. It's emotion plus business strategy. And in terms of ideas, I think that really comes down to everybody's throwing ideas out. You might get your idea done that following year, or you might not get it done for another three years.

54:14Greg Bradshaw:So it's not that the idea comes and then we do every idea. We'll discuss it, and we'll start looking at the pros and cons, and also where it intersects with someone else's passion. So if I kind of think, oh, I want to do something, and it drag also. So there's an intersection there. Us coming together to support that, or all four of us feel like it's something we can passionately get behind. So it's pretty organic how we decide which idea. But I would say the magic papers and that process, the documenting of that process, and checking back. So each year, checking back on the old papers, I'll say from 2016, Farmer, you had this desire.

54:54Greg Bradshaw:You wanted something. and we're halfway there but we could go a little farther to meet that desire so we'll go all the way back and we'll capture old magic papers and see what off of them we haven't realized yet and I would say at this point I don't think there's short of Elder Farm, I don't think there's anything that we haven't been able to pick off over 25 years because we've had a long time to do it

55:19Adam Farmerie:Some of those that's a great answer and some of those are quite abstract you know like one of the questions and she varies up the questions all the time. Some are constants. But, you know, for instance, one might be, you know, tell me about one of the happiest times in your life. When were you the most happy? And when you were doing the magic paper with Adam, one in particular that I remember was your fond memories of spending time with your brother. Totally. And at the time he was a chef in London and that dovetailed with other passions he had about and that we all actually shared as well. but loving the food and beverage industry, loving hospitality.

55:57Adam Farmerie:So how can you take, you know, love of one's brother in London and wanting to do a business with friends, but then also loving hospitality. So brother, business, hospitality. We brought Brad in. He became our executive chef at Public. We decided to dive deep and we realized, well, yeah, I don't know how to say I, but because we all have one brain at this point. It's hard to remember back then too. but you know we all wanted to surround a project and we all wanted to you know cut our teeth on all these different things hospitality allowed that to happen so tick my box tick adam's box ticks greg's box bring and so this is these are how things coalesce so when you see these through lines um you know that was one example where and then you were thrilled and and it made a great life for brad as well to come back and be our executive chef at public and he had an amazing career and still does and that was just the magic of the magic paper and these are what you do when

56:48Greg Bradshaw:you talked about the summit, like when you guys sit with each other for three days every year, which I also think is super special and unique. Yeah. Those that we have different kinds of summits with our leadership and also the annual one that's just us will be, you know, five days total, but we mess around for two days, sit together for the other three. So there's a lot of play in there too. Yeah. All right. One more question. I'm going to run to the back.

57:19Greg Bradshaw:coming all right here we go jackie hi hi um this is more like a process question you guys have such great work and it's a layered and dynamic and you know when you're building off a concept then you start executing in design and so what is your process for references to get inspired like even some of these pieces. I don't even know how that was engineered, those lights. You know, are you looking historical? Are you inspired by other people's details and other people's work? Or is it just, you know, a sliver of something you saw in your travels? Like where, what is the next part of then executing that great concept?

58:02William Harris:I think we get inspired by so many different things. And I think that's one of the things that we really, we mentioned a little bit here is, you know, we we always start with the idea. And so the beauty of that is it kind of allows us to have lots of inspirations, you know, and we can find these collisions or these contrasts. And I think the best work comes out of, you know, again, we've mentioned this idea of thinking sideways, you know, like not finding the obvious thing and trying to mash a couple very disparate things together or three very different things together. But that, you know, the best of those allow us to find inspiration, not only in the concept, but in some details or some other aspect, you know, like if you're looking at robots and trying to integrate that in with, you know, a farmhouse, I mean, I'm just throwing in that, that we haven't done that before, but, you know, like you, you have, you have something to draw from for a lot of just unique, unique ideas that can, you know, go down into that fine detail.

59:07William Harris:I think that's where a lot of the really cool stuff comes from. You look at some crazy light fixture, but it might have been based on some old circuit board or something like that. Really just not trying to find the obvious or actively trying to avoid the obvious and finding some fun contrasts. Great answer.

59:28Greg Bradshaw:Love it. We have one minute left, so I'm going to ask my final question, which has been, go either way. What has been the best piece of advice you've received or your greatest lesson learned over the last 25 years?

59:42Adam Farmerie:Don't work with your friends. We love ignoring advice, so we see how that went.

59:48Greg Bradshaw:Ignoring all the advice. That's a good one, too. I did tell them I was going to ask this question just FYI.

59:57Adam Farmerie:Yeah, we have so many. I think it's hard to narrow it down. I think the biggest lesson learned was the value of the decided commitment that we all gave each other. And I think that that's trickled down into a lot of our client relations, our staff relations, our restaurants, and our other businesses. but just for us in particular as friends, that it all worked because of that commitment. And I think that lesson of just doubling down on trust and loyalty and just never thinking about any alternative was, I think, one of our secrets of success as well. There was no other choice. We just doubled down.

1:00:51Adam Farmerie:And I think that was a great lesson learned. Yeah.

1:00:54Greg Bradshaw:And you have to make, it's funny, it's like there is no other choice and you have to keep making that choice that there's no other choice over and over and over again. Very hard to do. This is why 70 % of partnerships fail in the first three to five years. I would say four-person partnerships where nobody is in a relationship over friends for 35 years and business for 25 years. I bet it's 99 % fail. It's so easy at different junctures of life, at different ages to make a different choice and to say, this is it. So I'm really, I would say greatest lesson learned is the nourishment of being indefatigable and being able to say, no matter what, the trust is there.

1:01:38Greg Bradshaw:Things aren't going right. We're here. We're going to do it together. Nobody steps out. Stay in line together. Hold on together and go forward. And if you can do that for epic periods of time, the joy and the nourishment from that is unbelievable. It's unbelievable. So I would just say there's huge value and I hope there's more business models in the future that are structured this way.

1:02:04Adam Farmerie:Yeah. Drop the mic. Yeah. Nothing adds to that.

1:02:08Greg Bradshaw:We will end with that. It is a four-way marriage, but I love it. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for being here. Again, such an honor. Thank you all for listening. Thanks for being here, everyone. Thank you. Thanks, everybody.

1:02:23Greg Bradshaw:thanks for listening to hospitality designs what i've learned if you like what you've heard subscribe and review us on itunes or wherever you listen to podcasts