This week on the Creative Genius Podcast, Gail Doby welcomes L.A. DeRiggi, founder of Hudson Park Design, to discuss his meteoric rise from a design student to a successful firm owner. L.A. reflects on his unique background in marketing and promotions, explaining how he intentionally used an unpaid internship to validate his passion before committing to a Master’s program in Interior Architecture.

The conversation dives into L.A.’s transition from being a Design Director to becoming the owner of his own firm after his previous employer retired. He candidly discusses the challenges of building a team, managing expectations, and the “static” that often interferes with a leader’s instincts. L.A. also shares a powerful metaphor for business growth through his experiences solo hiking the vortexes of Sedona, Arizona, where he learned the value of “choosing your hard”.

In this podcast, you’ll hear about:

The Intentional Pivot: How L.A. moved from business management and promotion to interior design, using his past experience to fuel his current firm’s rapid growth.
A Growth Mindset in Action: How Hudson Park Design grew over five times in size by focusing on values, culture, and deep emotional connections with clients.
Luxury as Emotion: Why L.A. believes true luxury is defined by a sense of ease and belonging rather than just a price point.
AI vs. Human Intuition: Why the personal element and innate human connection will always give designers an advantage over automated rendering tools.

If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, view the full show notes here: https://thepearlcollective.com/s14e7-shownotes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7reRy5-9Zvc

Episode Transcript

Note: Transcript is created automatically and may contain errors.

Click to show transcript

Welcome to the Creative Genius Podcast LA and so glad to have you here.

Thank you so much, it’s so great to be here.

Well, I am so excited for everyone to hear from you today because you’ve had a little bit of an interesting journey and we only have a few clients that have done this where they’ve worked for somebody else and then all of sudden they either were they bought the business or they started a new business and you have just taken off like a rocket. So I’m really proud of you. I think that’s phenomenal.

Thank you.

Yeah, so let’s talk about first how did you get into design?

So.

I’ve always had this love and passion for design and moving things around and appreciating the flow of space and where things are and having nice things growing up. then I think we did in the sixth grade, we had to fill out, where do you see yourself in 20 years? And it was interior. I put interior designer. I just really felt like that was the right answer. in, gosh, who knows what year that was.

At that time, a male interior designer wasn’t like the top choice for a sixth grader. It was a lawyer, a professional basketball player, a police officer. So I erased it and I wrote architect. But still, you know, in the same field with maybe just more of a different tone to it. But then I kind of put that aside for a little bit. And then I really fell in love with the business side of things. So my first degree.

I went to school for business, business management and marketing. And then I worked for a few years afterwards. And I was doing a lot of really exciting jobs and I was working for a promotions company. And so that time right out of school, it was, was a lot of fun. I was doing different events at clubs and really trying to promote mixed martial arts, which is when that kind of first came.

big in the scene and then worked in sales, worked in business development and just really didn’t feel full at the end of the day. so I had heard about a design company, I’m from Pittsburgh originally, and there was a company in Shadyside, which is a nice area, and I just walked into the firm and

basically asked for an unpaid internship. And I was like, Hi, I’m here, I’d like to work here. And they’re like, well, what do you know? And I’m nothing. I don’t know anything. I’m happy to sweep the floors, go grab the coffee, do whatever you need me to do, but just want to be in this environment, kind of experience this industry, and see if it’s a go before I decide to go back to school for it. So I worked there, quit my jobs, worked there for three months, unpaid internship.

And then I enrolled in school in the fall in a master’s program, which I loved the program because it was a master of interior architecture. So it was really the next step. It was a two year program. I was really looking for obviously a better degree and the fastest path to get me to where I wanted to be.

Wow. Who knew? And look how well that served you because having that business development experience and the marketing and promotion and all of those different things, you had to be in business for yourself because really you have both sides that you’re able to use, Yeah. Well, so how did you end up getting to us? How did this all come about?

for sure.

So I had, so Fast Track, Pittsburgh School, graduated, moved to Florida. I worked for two firms and the firm I was working for previously to starting my own, was summer of 2021. after, it was the first High Point Market after everything really reopened and my previous boss and I were at High Point and we were,

you know, it’s always it’s always exciting to see the new furniture and visit the showrooms and things but we had never really been to any talks or speaker series. And so we got, you know, I think it was the first day we got there, we had we got the brochure and we saw your name on there and we didn’t know you. We didn’t know anything about you. We just we really liked the topic. And we thought, hey, let’s check this out. And we were working with a business coach at the time. But it was more of a it was a business coach that was

generalized. So they really kind of helped all industries. And it was one of those moments where we sat in your presentation. And it was like the stars aligned, like we just we were like, she knows what she’s talking about. And we and she can help us. And that was that was it. And then you sat you came and sat with us. You were swarmed with people. It was really like

a celebrity, I felt like there were paparazzi and all these people around you, like you were leaving this event and you immediately came up to us and were so welcoming to us and we sat with you for lunch and there were so many people like, Gail, Gail, and you’re just like, hold on, I’m having a conversation and you gave us all the attention that we needed and you know, just, was, we were like, she’s our girl, she’s gonna help us.

Well, and it was really interesting. and one of the things that I love is working with a leadership team and the three of you at that time were basically the leadership team for that company. And, it just really was, I don’t know. I think I just knew that I needed to help you all. And I think you had some really big challenges and for sure you did and you helped, helped her.

Yeah.

really get through a lot of those, let’s talk about some of those. What were some of the biggest ones she had in her business?

I think because we were a small firm at the time, but then we were growing so rapidly with the amount of projects that we were taking on. I think just from the start, it was really like organizational leadership and growing, you know, my experience coming from the business world and kind of working with structure and organizational charts and, and then going to a small design firm where there’s three people doing everything.

we’re all having to wear all the hats, regardless of, you know, position and who’s who. And then we start building the team and we went from like three people to 10 people overnight and like 10 projects to 42 projects. And so I think building kind of stepping back, looking at the vision for the company, her vision, and being able to relay the foundation, the foundation was already there. I mean, she was in business for

25 or 30 years and had built a really successful business. But I think just being able to kind of step back, lay another layer of foundation on everything and build from there to be able to create more success for her and more of what she was looking for with her company.

Well, and I think one of the things that was really interesting is watching you grow in your role there because you grew into, we talked about you being design director. So that meant you took on a lot more responsibilities and managing people and managing the projects as well. And just really getting into what it would take to run the company. You were starting to get a good feel for that with that position. So talk about that a little bit.

Yeah, it was definitely a because I think at that point I had only been there for three years. I started off as really kind of like an interior. mean, I was a licensed interior designer at t...