From Goldman Sachs to HGTV: How Galey Alix Rebuilt Her Life Through Design

0:00In one 24-hour period, I no longer had a job. I no longer had my fiancé and the family I wanted to build. I no longer had my health. How does a high-powered Wall Street executive go from managing billions of dollars to managing home renovations and a viral e-commerce store? I posted the video of me renovating their home. It got 30 million views on Instagram. Meet Galey Alix, who traded her 13-year career at Goldman Sachs for a tool belt and a video camera. It was definitely a sharp right turn. I went from Salesforce and spreadsheets to compound dust and miter saws. What started as a creative outlet to heal her soul quickly grew into a massive online community captivated by her weekend-long home transformations.

0:43The sun fell to the floor. He fainted because he couldn't believe this was his new house. Gailey is the force behind Gailey Alex Design. She joins us today to discuss how she navigates the grueling logistics of building a brand, the realities of self-motivation, and how she translates viral video moments into retail success. Welcome to Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and building in business. I'm your host, Adam Leventer. Gailey, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Adam. I'm excited. Very excited to have you here. So it's not every day that you see this pivot from Goldman Sachs, Wall Street, into home design and home renovations.

1:21So let's rewind back. How did this all get started? Yeah, it was definitely a sharp right turn. I went from, you know, Salesforce and spreadsheets to, you know, compound dust and miter saws, and it was a wild turn. But how I got there is, I guess the emotional side of it would be that I got engaged to who I thought was the love of my life while I was working at Goldman. He was running a company up in New York, and I was in Florida covering South Florida for Goldman. And I was in New York and I met him and we fell madly in love. And two years later got engaged and we got our dream home in Westport, Connecticut.

2:00But the problem with that is that I still wanted to work for Goldman and I had to stay in Florida to do that. So I said, we made a compromise. I was like, let me work in Florida for one more year for Goldman. I'll commute up every weekend. I'll work on the house. I'll make it beautiful for us. And then I'll retire, you know, in my early thirties and I will live with you happily ever after. We'll start a family in Connecticut. And like, we shook on it. It was great. So for the next year, I commuted up to Connecticut every weekend. And I was like, you know what? I really need help with this house.

2:33Like I'm going to find a designer. I'm going to find a kind, like a builder or a developer, or even just handymen who can help me with this house and really customize it and make it our dream home so that when I move into it in a year and it's perfect. But the problem is that I have CDO, which is OCD in alphabetical order, the way it should be. And I was like, I'm not going to let anybody work on this house without me present. I need to make sure it's perfect. Like every T needs to be crossed, every I dotted, I have to be on the grounds. And the problem is I could not find a single soul in Connecticut, designer or handyman who would only work on weekends.

3:10Everybody was like, this is not how we run our business. So by default, I realized I needed to renovate this house myself. And so being the control freak that I am, I commuted up every weekend. I did 52 round trip flights over the course of a year while working at Goldman. And I was running to HomeGoods. I was all over Home Depot, like white on rice. And I was making this our dream home. And I was sharing it with my 900 followers on Instagram, basically friends and family and some Goldman colleagues. And I realized very quickly that my favorite part of the whole process was surprising my fiance with a room.

3:48So I would turn our basement into like a theater room and then I would have him and I'd work all night while he was asleep. And then he'd come down in the morning and I'd like drop the sheet and I'd record his reaction. And it made my heart feel something that I had a feeling that the only thing I could equate it to is like winning a track meet in college, right? Like doing something where you just feel like this explosive joy and adrenaline. And I hadn't done anything like that in my Goldman career. And so getting to experience this in our home was making me so happy. And I started to post it to Instagram.

4:23So I was getting his reactions on all of the rooms and everything was great. Then this is where the story takes a sharp turn. So the year comes up, I finished the house. I finally finished it. Everything is beautiful. but what isn't beautiful is how I'm feeling about myself. I developed a really severe eating disorder and I was really battling my mental health. And I think the fear of losing my identity with my Goldman career coupled with wanting to be perfect for my fiance and not show him that I had any flaws. And then the stress of renovating this home by myself and commuting every weekend.

4:58Like I never had a day off in the week because it was five days on at Goldman, two days, you know, in Connecticut. And what ended up happening is I shared with him, you know, we were getting married in a couple of weeks and I didn't want to have any secrets. And I felt like I needed to find like a therapist to help me with this because I was controlling food in a really unhealthy way. And I thought he was going to, you know, embrace me and help me find a therapist. I really felt he loved me as much as a person can love another person. And instead, he felt that I had been dishonest by not sharing that I was sick.

5:34And I packed my bags and I had to leave the house that day with my two dogs and move back to Florida. And so I had just resigned from Goldman to move to Connecticut. I had just finished this house. I was about to get married. And all of a sudden, in one 24-hour period, I no longer had a job. I no longer had my fiance and the family I wanted to build. I no longer had my health and I was in the darkest place I've ever been in my life. By the way, thank you so much for sharing that story. It's a deeply profound story. And I have so many questions about all of this. But my first question is, where was the root of the anxiety?

6:16Like, was it that you were going to leave your job at Goldman and move to Connecticut and settle there and that was unsettling or that you didn't know kind of where you wanted to settle and you're traveling so much? Like, how does this all spiral? Yeah, the so I've struggled with perfectionism my whole life, which is part of my OCD tendencies. And I felt that for me to be, you know, like, a perfect person, I need to like carry my own weight financially. And I need to provide for myself and help my partner provide for our household. And because I was no longer able, like I couldn't work at Goldman while living in Connecticut because all my clients were in South Florida and they required that you live in the state that you're covering.

7:00And so I think a lot of the anxiety came from feeling like I was going to lose my independence as a woman. I was going to lose my identity as this finance exec. And I worked so hard to build up my career there. It's really, really hard to climb the ranks at Goldman. And I did it at a really young age. And I was really proud of that. And my whole family is in Florida. I have a big family. And so I was moving away from my family, my identity, and my ability to provide for myself all in one fell swoop to go become somebody else's wife in another state where their family lives. And it was a sacrifice at the time I was willing to make because I loved him and I wanted to be with him.

7:42But simultaneously, I think that my soul wasn't comfortable cashing that check. I think that the eating disorder partly came out in a, I've learned this in therapy, but like to save me because, you know, later down the road, I realized he was not the person that I would ever want to be married to. But I didn't know that at the time. And I also think that, you know, if somebody can't be there for you when you're at your weakest, then like in sickness and in health, right? Isn't that the point of marriage? And I also think that he didn't want to marry me for a good reason, which was that I had been hiding something I was struggling with and I wasn't honest in the relationship.

8:21I cared more about appearing perfect to him than being vulnerable and opening up about something that wasn't okay. And that's scary to marry somebody if they have secrets and they're not telling you about them. So I understood his point of view too. But I think, Like, yeah, a lot of the anxiety came from losing my identity and my ability to provide for myself, which is why, you know, when I moved back to Florida, I got my Goldman job back and I was very honest with them. And I told them about my mental health issue. And people can talk bad about Wall Street firms and, you know, they can say you can love a company, but a company will never love you back.

8:57And I did not have that experience. They embraced me. They found me resources. they offered up therapists and they found a way even though they had already given my position to somebody else because it was highly sought after they found a way to move that person around get them in another state just to give me my job and my kind of routine back to help me in my recovery just so i'm clear on on the order of things so after the engagement fallout you move back to florida that day yeah you get help and goldman supports you in this journey yes i reached out to them. And I said, I know I'm no longer an employee.

9:34I reached out to my old boss. And I said, I know that I resigned a couple of weeks ago, but I would really, I would love to get my job back because I'm no longer moving to Connecticut. I'm back in Florida. This is what happened. And they, you know, they found a way to make it work. Okay. And part of this journey, you log off of social media, you go on the social media fast and you sort of go dark for this period of time, you get the help that you need. And then you realize at some point that when you log back in, there's a huge demand for your design services. Yeah. So good on you, Adam. You did your research, my friend.

10:11So I logged out of Instagram as soon as I got on the plane back to Florida with my dogs. And I was like, I cannot bear the thought of somebody writing me and being like, how was the wedding? Why are there no photos? Are you on your honeymoon? What happened? what's going on? And I'd have to tell them like, well, I'm sick, I'm broken, I lost my job and my fiance and life is really dark right now. Like I knew that my mental health was already on the brink, and I didn't want to add social media to it. So I deleted the app on my phone, but I left my account up so anybody could still find it. And I was just like, not today, or maybe not next month even.

10:50And I went into therapy, and I got a eating disorder nutritionist, like who specialized in it and the therapist who also specialized in that. It was extremely humbling. But what ended up happening is, you know, I did that for, I think, three months. And then I logged back in. And I, you know, I had driven home from a therapy session. And I was like, you know what I'm going to do because I feel so great. I'm going to log back into Instagram. And so I remember pulling into my garage. And you know how sometimes you get home and you just like aren't ready to transition into the house yet. So you just sit in your car listening to music for like a couple extra minutes.

11:28I don't know why, but I do this all the time. So I was sitting there, I was feeling myself and I was like, you know what, I'm gonna, I'm gonna log back into Instagram. And so I downloaded the app, I got back into my account. And I swear on my life, I thought I logged into a celebrity's account. I, I have never been like, it was an out of body experience to log in. And what should say 900 is like six figures as far as your followers. And I was sorting through what felt like thousands of DMs. And it was from like Australia, from Boston, from Toronto, from Germany, like all over the place, like countries, cities I didn't recognize.

12:11And they were strangers who had seen my videos in Connecticut and they were wanting to hire me to do design work for them. And I could not, I mean, I sat in that garage for literally two hours. And I realized I could not find a single message from somebody that I knew. Like, like they had been so buried, like the what happened to your engagement, where's the honeymoon, that I couldn't, I couldn't even find them. And I was like, you know what, I feel like this is a sign that like, I'm supposed to do something here. Like, this is calling me and I need to answer. But at that point, I already had my Goldman job back.

12:46So I was like, I'm just gonna to say yes to strangers. I can only work on the weekends because Monday to Friday, I am Goldman's and I am going to just like see if I can help people. And the first family I said yes to was in Boynton beach and they went to Disney world for the weekend. My dogs and I moved in, we renovated their home. It was just me. And then my best friend at the time, Jay, who's very handy. He He came in and helped for a few hours, but renovated the whole thing, did not sleep. It was mostly just me with the dogs, listening to sad music, crying, thinking about my fiance, but also like thinking about the family.

13:24And it was a very cathartic experience. And anyways, when it finished, they came home. The sun fell to the floor. He fainted because he couldn't believe this was his new house. I posted the video of me renovating their home. It got 30 million views on Instagram. Oh my God. And it was like, okay, like I'm supposed to, I'm supposed to keep, I'm supposed to keep doing this. And so I just started doing it for free. I never charged anybody. I just started doing it on weekends for families. And I tried to do for them in their home, what I wasn't able to do in creating my kind of ever after at my home in Connecticut.

14:00kids. So all the love I was putting into my home, I took that same exact energy and put it into strangers' homes. And then that's where within a year I got a request to do a TV show. Okay. We'll get to the TV show in a sec, but before we do, a question on this. So how does someone who has OCD or in your world, what did you say, COD? CDO. It's an alphabetical order. And I'm not diagnosed. This is a self-diagnosis. I think I think I have OCD tendencies, just to be clinically correct. All right. Self-diagnosed CDO. How does someone with your personality type decide that this is going to go from a side hustle to a full-time thing?

14:41And when do you decide to walk away from Goldman? So I think that sometimes decisions are made for you. I don't even know that you're in control. I felt like design just kept calling me and I just kept answering. And I don't even know that it's so much my, you know, obsessive compulsive tendencies, but more so the way that design, the way I felt helping people love their homes was a very different feeling than it felt when I would close, you know, a$200 million deal for Goldman. It was a Sunday. I was doing a reveal for a former NFL superstar, a linebacker. And here's this huge man standing in this dining room.

15:24And I do the like, one, two, three, open your eyes. And he opens his eyes and he sees his new dining room and he starts sobbing. and he's like holding his eyes, trying to keep the tears in. And then I start crying. And he was like, I'm just thinking about like this dining room and getting to show my mom that like, this is where we get to have Christmas dinners now. And like, she's going to be so proud of me because this is my dining room. And I remember in that moment, I was like, tomorrow I'm going to get in my car. I'm going to drive down to Miami and I'm going to present an international small cap equity fund to an investment committee, you know, in a penthouse in Coral Gables.

15:59And I don't want to go. I just want to be here in this moment with this man crying because of something my team and I did for him and how it made him feel. And I don't care about presenting an international small cap fund anymore. I just don't care. And so that was kind of the point where I realized Goldman was feeding my mortgage and not my soul. But I still felt very loyal to them because they took me back in when I needed them. So I committed to working for them another couple of years, even after having that feeling, because I wanted to do for them what they had done for me, which is why I kept working for another couple years, even while I was filming the TV show.

16:41But they can see what's going on. I mean, they're following you. They probably see this climb on social media that you're having on the side. So they're not stupid. They know at some point, your days are numbered, I would assume. Yeah. And they, and they approved for me to do the show. I was the only person in Goldman history that they approved to be on a TV show, because we've had a lot of people at Goldman that, you know, wanted to be on the apprentice and things like that. Like Kwame, he was at Goldman and they wouldn't approve it because it was too much of like a PR risk. I got really lucky with David Solomon because our CEO was also a DJ on the weekends.

17:16I don't know if you know about his DJing, DJ Saul. Very interesting. Okay, Very cool. Yeah. So the CEO of Goldman Sachs is also, you know, like an EDM DJ. Oh, wow. And so I met with David for breakfast and I was like, look, you're DJing on the weekends. Like, can you just approve me to like surprise families on the weekends? Like, it's like nothing bad can come from this. And he was like, I'll make a phone call. And within like five minutes, I had a voicemail from HR saying I was approved to have my TV show. And so that's how my HBO show happened. Yes. Home in a heartbeat. Home in a heartbeat.

17:49Yes. Yes. Which is no longer, right? At some point you decide to walk away from the show? Yeah, yeah. We did one season. And I mean, I wish I could say it was my decision. It wasn't entirely my decision. You know, we didn't get the pickup that we had wanted. But I do think that it happened for the right reason, which is that I don't think we could have filmed another season with that same show premise because my team and I were literally dying. We would go sometimes 72 to 80 hours without sleeping, without sitting down. And our bodies were falling apart in front of us. Like some of the reveal days, I will have not slept for literally two days.

18:31And you can see like my left eye is twitching. They had to keep editing it out because I was so underslept. And I was like forgetting words. I couldn't find the right words to say like while I'm talking to the family on the reveal day because I was so tired. So it wasn't a healthy working environment. And I take complete responsibility for that. It wasn't HGTV or HBO or production. Like it was me saying like, I know we can get this done. And I know we can make it perfect. And that was kind of a recipe for mental health disaster. So to answer your question from before, like when did I know it was time to leave?

19:07What ended up happening is like after we filmed the show, while I was still, you know, closing for like raising money for Goldman and being a full-time employee and then doing this on the weekend, editing the show, installing all the jobs, designing it all myself. I was really overwhelmed and I could feel myself getting back to that place I was in Connecticut where I got really overwhelmed and I was no longer thinking clearly and putting myself first. Not so much in the eating standpoint, but more so just in the not making space for calm. For me, I was just constantly busy. And I think that I was getting really run down.

19:46So after the show came out is when I decided, I think it's time to leave Goldman. And they were so wonderful and kind and understanding about it. And they were cheering me on. So it was wonderful. Got you. Okay. So you leave Goldman and then Gailey Alex design becomes a real thing, a full-time thing. My first question is, where do all of your trade skills come from? I see your videos and you're not just designing spaces. You're pulling a drywall, you're running electrical, you're mixing cement. I mean, you're doing all the things. And you were doing that in the early days when this was a side hustle.

20:29So where do these skills come from? It started in Connecticut where I didn't have any help. So I just had to kind of trial and error my way through it. And I'm, I'm pretty creative. So I would just kind of, I would just kind of trial and error it. Honestly, I wasn't even YouTubing it or anything, but who really helped me is like, once I moved to Florida and I brought Jay in, who is my BFF slash handyman, he really taught me a lot of skills, but also like we learned together, Like we both learned how to wallpaper together with just trial and error on our first wall, right? So like we kind of grew up teaching each other.

21:05And then PJ on my team, who's my woodworker, he's taught me so much about woodwork. And then, you know, Steven, who does a lot of my electrical and drywall work, like he's taught me about how to do level five compound finishes and stuff. So it's like, you know, I just, as I built the team, I've picked up skills from each of those teammates, right? And we all kind of learn from each other. Speaking of other skills, are there any skills that you can borrow from your days at Goldman that you find valuable as a founder? Oh my gosh, so many. My new book coming out, You Can Do Beautiful Things. I have a chapter in it where I talk about how to build a business from scratch.

21:45And it's applicable to not just the design sector, but anybody building a business in any sector. and I share a lot of the skills that I learned at Goldman and building out that business. I closed$5 billion for my firm and I learned a lot in kind of pattern recognition. And what ended up happening is the better you are at pattern recognition, the better and more efficient you are at getting better at your job. And so patterns that I recognize, I now deploy in my design business. So for example, story selling. If you are good at telling a story and combining it with a product or a service that you want to sell, it is going to be more memorable.

22:29It is going to be repeatable. And it is going to, hand over fist, get you more sales. Your close ratio is going to be significantly higher. And I noticed that as I was going into my pitches, right? Like I'm pitching these complex financial products. And I'm noticing that if I can tie each one into some sort of story, that when I leave that office, I'm more likely to get a trade. And a month later, I'm going to get another trade and then another trade because they're remembering what I told them because I either broke it down into something more simple, like a story that they could associate that strategy with, or it became more repeatable where they could repeat it, right?

23:07My clients were financial advisors. So they could repeat it to their clients more easily and get them to sign off on placing that trade into a Goldman fund. And so story selling, I think, is at the heart of one of the greatest skill sets you can have as an entrepreneur. I'll give you a quick example. So if I was going to open up a presentation and I wanted to talk about maybe a strategy that I want somebody to invest in that's a little off the beaten path, right? Maybe everybody's investing in U.S. large cap stocks and maybe developed markets like Europe and Asia, but nobody's looking at underdeveloped markets, like emerging economies.

23:45And maybe I think that's where they're going to get more value right now. So how can I use a story to get people to start thinking about investing in emerging markets and not so much developed markets? And I would tell them the story that back in the 90s, there was a very wealthy businessman in New York City, and he pulled up in his$500 ,000 Rolls Royce outside of a bank in the financial district in Manhattan. He parks his Rolls Royce on the curb. He walks in and he says, I'd like to speak with a loan officer immediately. I need to take out a loan. And the first loan officer who sees him sees this car outside and he goes, oh, sir, come over here.

24:23I can help you. So he goes over and he says, all right, so I need to take out a loan for the next two weeks. I'm traveling to Europe and I need a loan for$5 ,000. And he says, okay, there'll be a little bit of interest on that and we'll need to see your identification and proof of funds. And he goes, oh, I don't have anything on me and I'm leaving today. Can I just give you my Rolls Royce as collateral? And you can hold on to that and park it in your garage and I'll give you the keys. And then when I come back, I will pay you in full plus interest so that I get my car back. And the banker said, OK, that can work.

25:00So he hands over the keys. He gets his$5 ,000 cash and he goes to Europe and they park his car under the bank in the secured parking. He comes back two weeks later with$5 ,000 in cash. He slides it across the desk to the loan officer and he says, here's the$5 ,000 and here's $15 for interest. Slides it across and he goes, can I have my keys back? The guy passes him the keys and the loan officer says, sir, we've been racking our brains. I mean, you've got a Rolls Royce. You don't seem like somebody who needs a loan for$5 ,000. Can we ask why you needed a loan for such a small amount for two weeks?