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From Goldman Sachs to HGTV: How Galey Alix Rebuilt Her Life Through Design
00:47:24
Galey Alix shares how losing her job, fiancé, and health led her from Goldman Sachs to HGTV and into building a design business rooted in emotional room transformations.
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- [00:00]
A
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.
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B
How does a high powered Wall street executive go from managing billions of dollars to managing home renovations and a viral e commerce store?
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A
I posted the video of me renovating their home. It got 30 million views on Instagram.
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B
Meet Gailey Alex, who traded her 13 year career at Goldman Sachs for tool belt in a video camera.
- [00:28]
A
It was definitely a sharp right turn. I went from salesforce and spreadsheets to compound dust and miter saws.
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B
What started as a creative outlet to heal her soul quickly grew into a massive online community captivated by her weekend long home transformations.
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A
The sun fell to the floor. He fainted because he couldn't believe this was his new house.
- [00:48]
B
Gaily is the force behind Gailey Alex design. She joins us today to discuss how she navigates the grueling logistics of building a brand new, 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 a business. I'm your host, Adam Laventer. Gaily, welcome to the show.
- [01:09]
A
Thank you so much for having me, Adam.
- [01:11]
B
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. So let's rewind back. How did this all get started?
- [01:25]
A
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 fel badly in love and two years later got engaged and we got our dream home in Westport, Connecticut. But 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 30s 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. Like, I'm going to find a designer, I'm going to find a builder or a developer or even just handyman 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, and I was like, I'm not gonna let anybody work on this house without me present. I need to make sure it's perfect. Like every, 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. Everybody 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 Home Goods. 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. So 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. So 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. Like, I never had a day off in the week because it was five days on at Goldman, two days in Connecticut. And what ended up happening is I shared with him. We were getting married in a couple weeks and I didn't want to have any secrets. And I felt like I needed to find a therapist to help me with this because I was controlling food in a really unhealthy way. And I thought he was going to embrace me and helped 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. And 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 long had a job. I no longer had my fiance and the family I wanted to build. I no longer had my health. And I. I was in the darkest place I've ever been in my life.
- [06:04]
B
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? Like, 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?
- [06:32]
A
Yeah, 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 to, 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. And 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, you know, finance exec. And I worked so hard to build up my career there. It's really, really hard to. To climb the ranks at Goldman. And I. I did it at a really young age, and I was really proud of that. And. 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. But 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 I. 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 on it in the relationship. I cared more about appearing perfect to him than being vulnerable and opening up about something that, you know, wasn't okay. And that's scary to marry somebody if they have secrets and they're not telling you about them. So, like, I understood his point of view, too. But I think, 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 they can say, you can love a company, but a company will never love you back. And 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.
- [09:21]
B
Just so I'm clear on the order of things. So after the engagement fallout, you move back to Florida that day.
- [09:27]
A
Yeah.
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B
You get help. And Goldman supports you in this journey?
- [09:31]
A
Yeah. So I reached out to them and I said, I know, I'm no longer an employee. I reached out to my old boss and I said, I know that I resigned a couple weeks ago, but 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.
- [09:51]
B
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.
- [10:07]
A
Yeah. So good. Good on you, Adam. You did your research, my friend. Um, so. So I. I logged out of Instagram as soon as I got on the plane back to Florida with my do, 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. 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. And I went into therapy and I got eating disorder, nutritionist, like, who specialized in it, and a 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 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. I 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 going to 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 the, the. 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. And 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. So I was like, I'm just gonna 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 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. And 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.
- [13:39]
B
Oh my God.
- [13:40]
A
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. So all the love I was putting into my home, I took that same exact energy and, and put it into strangers homes. And then that's where within a year, I got a request to do a TV show.
- [14:11]
B
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, in your world. What did you say? Cod.
- [14:24]
A
Cdo. It's an alphabetical order. And I'm not diagnosed like this is a self diagnosis. I think I have OCD tendencies just to be clinically correct.
- [14:32]
B
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? And when do you decide to walk away from Goldman?
- [14:45]
A
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 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 a $200 million deal for Goldman. It was a Sunday. I was doing a reveal for a former NFL superstar linebacker. And here's this huge man standing in this dining room. And I do the like, 1, 2, 3, open your eyes. And he opens his eyes and he sees his new dining room and, 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. And, and 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.
- [16:28]
B
So.
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A
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 another couple years, even while I was filming the TV show.
- [16:42]
B
But 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.
- [16:54]
A
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. I don't know if you know about his DJing, DJ Saul.
- [17:19]
B
Very interesting. Okay, cool.
- [17:21]
A
Yeah. So the CEO of Goldman Sachs is also, you know, like an EDM DJ. Oh, wow. I met with David for breakfast, and I was like, look, you're DJing on the weekends. Can you just approve me to surprise families on the weekends? Nothing bad can come from this. And he was like, I'll make a phone call. And within 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.
- [17:47]
B
Yes. Home in a Heartbeat.
- [17:48]
A
Home in a Heartbeat, Yes.
- [17:50]
B
Which is no longer right. At some point, you decide to walk away from the show.
- [17:54]
A
Yeah. Yeah. We did one season. And, I mean, I. 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. And 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. 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? What 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. So 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.
- [19:56]
B
Gotcha. Okay, so you leave Goldman and then Gaily, Alex, design becomes a real thing, a full time thing. My first question is, where do all of your trade skills come from? Like, I see your videos and you're not like, just designing spaces. You're like pulling a drywall, you're running electrical, you're, you know, 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. So where do these skills come from?
- [20:32]
A
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 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 was my BFF handyman. He really taught me a lot of skills. But also we learned together. We both learned how to wallpaper together with just trial and error on our first wall. Right. So we kind of grew up teaching each other. And then PJ on my team, who's my woodworker, he's taught me so much about woodwork. And then Steven, who does a lot of my electrical and drywall work, like, he's taught me about how to do Level 5 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.
- [21:32]
B
Speaking of other skills, are there any skills that you can borrow from your days at Goldman that you find valuable as a founder.
- [21:38]
A
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. And 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, it 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? My clients were financial advisers, so they could repeat it to their clients more easily and get them to sign off on placing that trade to 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 US Large cap stocks and maybe developed markets like Europe and Asia, but nobody's looking at underdeveloped markets like emerging economies. And 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. I 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 onto 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, okay, that can work. So 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 $5000, 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? He goes, where else in New York City can I get secured covered parking for $15 for two weeks? And moral of that story is that I think if you invest in emerging markets, by the way, this is not financial advice. This was a story from years ago. So please, do not invest in emerging markets. Yes, I still financial advisor and fully licensed, but if. And then I say, if you want to get $20,000 worth of parking for $15, then the place to invest right now is in emerging markets. Right? And so you told a story that tied a concept or a strategy into what you're about to present to make it a little bit more memorable, and you get them to feel something. And so I've translated that into my business, right? Because every video you see, I'm telling a story. There's A story being told of how this room is uncovering or how the family is getting surprised or how something is made or how it's done. And so I'm story selling my way through that and then I'm including products in it, right, which are now products with my own name on it because I have all these licensing deals. So now I'm story selling my products, wrapping it into the video. And guess what? People are remembering it. It's making them feel some sort of way, they're liking how they feel at the end of it. They're liking the family's reaction. And so, so all of this is creating, you know, positive, like emotional tie to whatever the product is that I'm showing. So story selling is huge.
- [27:06]
B
And you can sort of apply this framework to not only long form storytelling or long form content, but also short form as well. I mean, I've watched some of your TikTok videos and it sort of seems like even your 30 to 60 second videos follow this kind of story arc. And you're, you're not even saying anything. You're just, you can sort of watch this 30 to 60 second clip and follow along. You take a space that looked like X, you transform it to Y, there's beautiful music, there's some subtitles. But as a viewer, like, I sort of feel like I'm being taken on a journey in a way. Is it that sort of intentional, even with your short form stuff?
- [27:42]
A
Completely intentional. It's a lot of show. Don't tell, right? Like I want to show you how it's being created. I don't need to tell you because you'll be able to download that as you're absorbing everything I'm doing. And I do it very quick and very fast paced because it's so digestible that they only need to watch it once. Right? Like you want to get multiple views to help your engagement and get caught in the algorithm. So if you show just enough where it's interesting, but they don't feel like they've fully downloaded it, they're going to watch it again and again to really absorb it and experience it. So there's also a benefit to doing things quickly and short form in storytelling for that reason as well. Because now you have to take the algorithm into consideration.
- [28:25]
B
How do you think about the channels by which you are distributing your content? Because you know, early on you have the success. On Instagram you go from whatever, 900 friends and family followers to over a hundred thousand. I think you have 1.8 million or so followers on IG today, TikTok is even bigger for you. You're almost at 2.8 million followers on TikTok.
- [28:45]
A
Yeah. So between, between Facebook, TikTok and Instagram, I'm a little over 5 million right now. And I do change certain aspects of what I'm showing based on the audience. I definitely use different music on TikTok. I think that Facebook, you actually can do better with like slower videos and not, not so quick. Cause it tends to be an older audience and I think that they want to sit with it and they have much more patience. Whereas the younger generation, like gen Z on TikTok, they have very short attention Spanish. So you have to be really, really quick and punchy. If you have any shot of getting them to hang and not keep scrolling and then Instagram is kind of somewhere in the middle, I would say, gotcha.
- [29:28]
B
Okay. What have you learned about personal branding yourself as an individual? I mean, you are the face of Gailey Alex design, obviously. But you know, do you think about your personal brand strategically in a way that you may not have in the past? I mean, you've got the signature hat going, which is one thing I've noticed. But how else do you think about it?
- [29:49]
A
That's a great question. And it leads into kind of the second part of my answer to your other question about like, what lesson did you learn from Goldman? And it has to do with personal branding. So I think that you would be a fool to think that you can go out and do the same thing as everyone else and expect different results. You have to do things different. If you want different results, that goes into how you build your business, that goes into how you build your website, that goes into how you self market, that goes into how you do your social media. Your you have to do things different, otherwise you are getting into the exact same bowl of soup as everybody else is swimming in. And so when it comes to self branding, I think that it's all about your competitive niche. Right. As an investor for many years, I would look at companies and I would evaluate why is Netflix going to outperform Hulu next month? What is their competitive niche, their edge that they have over Hulu that would make me want to invest them. In other words, I predict that they're going to have a higher rate of return. And I would look into it and I'd say, okay, so Netflix has a significantly broader global reach. Hulu is still very much domestic. And because of that, they have a billion more viewers every month. And therefore I think their success next month is going to be trending higher than Hulu. And so their competitive niche is that they're more global. I'm investing in them. If I'm going to invest in myself as a business, what is my competitive niche? How am I going to be different? And I think the best place to start, if you are building a business and you don't know what your competitive niche is, but you know you need one if you want to expect different results than other people, then I say, think about the end user. Think about your customer or your patient. Whatever sector you're in, just think about the end user of whatever service or good you are going to deliver. In my case, it was design. So I think about the homeowner and I say, okay, if I'm a homeowner and I'm interviewing 20 different designers, they're all probably going to have the same value prop, right? The same pitch that they give me. We're going to really care about your home. We're really personalized and customized in everything that we do. We're going to stay on budget. Like, everybody can make the same promises and probably honestly do a great job. So how do you set yourself apart? And I said, okay, well, if I'm the homeowner and I'm going to hire a designer, that means my home's going to be under construction. So what are the things that are going to really give me anxiety? I'm going to have anxiety about having to make a million decisions. Do I want the baseboard to be 9 inches or 9 and a half or 10 or 10 and a half inches high? Do I want the hardware in my kitchen to be, like, aged brass? Do I want it to be aged bronze? Do I want it to be pewter? You're going to get hit with a million decisions that you have to make, and I'm going to get decision fatigue, and it's going to take time out of my life. That's going to drive me nuts. Also, I'm going to be living through construction. I'm going to be getting all the VOC paint fumes, and I'm going to be breathing in compound dust. And maybe there's going to be, you know, people I don't know walking through my house all day long while I'm here with my family. Maybe I'm going to go for multiple weeks without a kitchen. So we're going to have to, like, wash our dishes in a, like, guest bathroom sink for three weeks while our kitchen's being done, or am I just going to have to move out. Like, I mean, there are so many stressors that come from the homeowner. So I'm sitting here thinking, okay, why don't I just address all of them? Why don't I come in and say I'm going to not look like anybody else you could possibly be interviewing with or hire? Because I'm going to make it so that you don't have to make one single decision. I'm going to make it so that you don't have to live through weeks of construction and breathing in compound dust. And I'm also going to make it so that you don't have to experience a bunch of people you don't know walking in and out of your house all day long for weeks. And I'm going to do that by doing your entire renovation in 72 hours. And so you're just going to go to your parents house for the weekend or you're going to go to Disney World. And also I'm not going to tell you a single thing that I'm doing. So you can't have anxiety about what you don't know. There's no decisions you have to make. The only decisions you make are two. Are you going to hire me and trust me with your home and your life savings and B, what is the budget? You make those two decisions and that's it. We meet. I walk through your house with you. I understand how the house isn't working for you. I understand your design style. I download all of it, but I tell you nothing. So I'm like a CIA agent. I ask questions and I interview you, I talk to your home and I understand what is not working in the home. I'm opening up your drawers, I'm looking behind doors, I'm looking at electrical panels, I'm downloading everything, but I'm saying nothing. And then you give me your budget and I tell you how many rooms I think I can do at the level that you know, I know will create ROI and make this your dream home. I don't even sometimes tell them what rooms I'm doing. Like you can come home and you don't know if you're getting a new bedroom and kitchen or if you're getting a new outdoor backyard and patio. Like you don't even know what you're signing up for. I truly keep everything hidden from the client. That is how I created a competitive niche because I come in and I just have a completely different business model than everybody else in the space. And I was doing this before the TV show. So the TV show is literally docu style, just recording what I was already doing and post TV show. That's still exactly what I'm doing. I've never consulted with a client. They don't know what colors I'm using, they don't know what style. They just have to trust me.
- [35:19]
B
So still, like this approach of speed and efficiency of design is still the unique competitive advantage that you have.
- [35:28]
A
Well, now that I have so many products I can get for free, there's a whole nother competitive advantage, right? Which is that if I use my products, you know, inside, I use my ceiling strips with hewn and I use, you know, my wallpaper with Home Depot or whatever, like I'm getting all of that product for free. So there's also kind of a nice ROI you get in working with me.
- [35:48]
B
But the 72 hour turnaround, like you've got to have some sort of roster of trades and resources that you can pull from, right, to make this happen.
- [35:58]
A
So I've got a set team of eight. Within that team, I've got somebody who does plumbing and electrical and drywall. I've got somebody who does woodwork. And then the rest of the girls are like just super talented. I mean, I have one woman, Kay, who's really, really handy and she does electrical and compound and everything too. But it's really two gentlemen and five women and myself. And between us, we have pretty much
- [36:25]
B
everything covered and people are paying I would imagine like a pretty handsome premium for this.
- [36:32]
A
So that's where I have struggled in making the transition from Goldman to design, is that I've had a really hard time figuring out how to charge people. Because if you think about it, you know, at Goldman I would eat whatever I hunted and they would pay me X basis points on it. And like it was done. I never had to like pitch myself or pitch like the value of my work, right? And somebody that has struggled with a sense of self worth, you know, for years, that was really hard for me. Which is why all the way up through the end of the TV show, even on the TV show, I never charged a single client. I do ask my team what they're going to charge and the client pays my team, but I personally never charge them for anything. And I kind of believe deep down that if I did this because I was doing it for the right reasons, which is like, I really wanted to make these people's lives better. I really wanted to help them with their home, then like eventually it would come back to me. And it did. Because even though I didn't make any money on years of design jobs while my team still did. I made sure they got paid, but I didn't. I've been more than taken care of with all of the products I've been able to create because the videos turned out well, the reactions were amazing. And then I get more followers and then I get more product deals, and I'm building out this book that's coming out. So, like, all of these beautiful things where I don't necessarily have to value myself and tell somebody what I'm charging have happened as a result of the design jobs.
- [38:06]
B
But still you have this mindset where you're not going to charge for your design services, but there'll be second and third order effects that you'll just benefit from.
- [38:17]
A
So as of this last year, my team has told me that I need to start charging, and I'm now trying very hard.
- [38:26]
B
I mean, there's people listening that would tell you the exact same thing.
- [38:28]
A
I know, I know, I know. I've got a team that's kind of forcing me to charge people now. And I do have a lot of, like, legal fees and all of these things I'm having to pay for with all these other deals that I'm doing. So it is, it is important to charge. But I will say no matter what I'm charging, I'm still giving them more product, like, in value than what I'm charging. So in my mind, it still comes
- [38:52]
B
out as a wash. And how big can these projects go? So they can give you a budget and say their budget only covers three rooms or four rooms. Let's say they give you a really, really healthy budget, like a half a million to, I don't know, three quarters of a million dollars to redo the house. Can you get a whole house redesigned in 72 hours?
- [39:10]
A
So we do those in phases. Right. So, you know, when I have my multimillion dollar design jobs, I will, I will split it into phases. It's. It's the only way to make it possible on my team physically. And then also I like to be able to really spend time, significant time on each room and not feel like I'm rushing through it just to like, like move things around and consider that room done. Like, every inch of that room is touched by us with something. So, yeah, we do it in phases. Like, some of my projects have four phases.
- [39:41]
B
Okay, so let's talk about the business model. Let's assume you're going to continue to not charge hefty design fees and you're going to benefit from these second and third order effects of what you do. So you talked earlier about these licensing deals. When I shop on gaily alexdesign.com I can actually shop for products. I can click on pillows or lighting, and I can go over and shop through Wayfair, which is, I assume, one of your partnerships, and get Gaily Alex design products on Wayfair. How do these deals come together?
- [40:15]
A
Yeah, so it started. The product you see on Wayfair is also on Home Depot. Right. I will have a product and once it's on E Comm, it'll be on several E Comm stores. Except for my wallpaper, that is only on homedepot.com but what ends up happening is either the brand reaches out to me through my social media, or if we really want to work with somebody, we'll reach out to them and we say, look, I don't have any exclusivity right now in flooring, for example. And I really doing a lot of woodwork on ceilings and I want to turn this flooring into ceiling strips and create a new product out of it. And Huan had reached out to me that they do flooring and I said, I want to turn this into, into ceiling strips and also do a flooring deal with you guys. And so we build this partnership. And now I use my Shopify website, which I've had literally from day one when we started selling baseball hats as my first product. We put that on the website. And so now anybody that goes to my website can do a couple of things. They can shop the individual products, like they can buy the ceiling strips and the flooring or the wallpaper or whatever, but also they can shop my projects. So any project you've seen me post on social media where I'm sliding a chair around or I'm rolling a rug out or I'm installing wallpaper, you can click on that specific project and then I have every single thing down to the paint color linked for that project. So anybody can replicate any of my rooms. And then. And that's. That's all on my Shopify website.
- [41:43]
B
Yes. So for listeners that are not actually clicking through a laptop at the moment, they're just listening along. You can go on your site, Gaily Alex Design, click on my projects, Pick a project like Gailey's Home Studio. I can click on that and I can actually shop by individual product based on what's in that exact room that I'm looking at. Very cool.
- [42:05]
A
Exactly. And I think that's unique in the design space because I think a Lot of people don't reveal their sources because they don't want, you know, all of the work and effort that they put in to be replicated for free. And I totally understand that. However, all of my projects are still so customized to each of my clients. Even if you bought every single thing that I linked, it still wouldn't look exactly like how I customized it into their space. So I feel like, why not share my sources and share the love? If somebody wants to replicate something or they really want to know where I got that rug, and chances are it's a Gale Alex drug anyway, so then I benefit all over again by them buying it. So it's a win win.
- [42:46]
B
How are you managing your time at this point? So you've got the team that's on site with you handling the actual physical projects, but you've got this major website which requires a ton of time and attention. You have the social media stuff, you have the book, you have what was the TV show. I mean, there's all these things going on. How do you think about how to best allocate your time to.
- [43:07]
A
So what's crazy is that all of Gailey Alec's design, as far as kind of the corporate side of it, take out installs and design work, but the behind the scenes, the admin, it is literally me and my best friend Maria. That's it. We don't have assistants, we don't have any additional help. I mean, we have legal teams and a PR team who are amazing. But as far as running the business, tennis, it's my best friend Maria, and we met in high school. She was a couple years ahead of me and she was the cool older girl who I was like, she'll never know my name. She'll never know who I am. She was like, you know, captain of the tennis team. And I just thought she was so cool. And probably 20, 18, 2019, she sends me a DM and right when I account started to grow with like, I had done the 30 million view video that I told you about earlier and she sends me a dm. She's like, hey, Gailey, it's Maria from high school. I don't know if you remember me, but like, I work in E Com and I would love to help you, like, develop like a product line if you ever want to do that. And I was like, oh, my gosh, Maria is writing me. Like, I felt so special that she knew who I was and, like, was following my Instagram and I had like a million followers at that time. But, like, I was so, so excited that Maria knew who I was. And I was like, oh, my gosh, absolutely. Let's jump on a call. And I would say within like six months, she had the website up and running. And we had baseball hats, like three different style hats with my GA heart logo on the front. And it was the very first product. And she set up that Shopify account and it was so well done, so easy, so beautiful. And we sold a lot of hats. And then she was like, all right, now it's time for product. Let's do picture frames, let's do wall art, let's do pillows. And so she then launched all of that and helped coordinate all the containers in the pandemic. And she still had a day job too, while I had my Goldman job. So we were both two girls with side hustles with this website, trying to run it. And then when the show ended and I left Goldman, she left her day job. And then we went into doing this together. So it's literally just the two of us running this entire website.
- [45:19]
B
Does she also wear the signature hat every day?
- [45:21]
A
Not every day, but, like when we go to events together. Like, we just got at to be in The Times Top 100 Creators event.
- [45:29]
B
Congrats.
- [45:30]
A
And it's like a dinner. Thank you. In New York. And so we're gonna go wearing matching hats and like black jumpsuits. Cause it looks like overalls. Cause it's cocktail attire. So we gotta, like, fancy it up but still wear a hat.
- [45:42]
B
Gailey, you've got a new book out. Can you just share more on that?
- [45:47]
A
Yeah. So it drops August 4th, and it's called you'd Can Do Beautiful Things. And I talk in it not just about how to build a business, but also how to you fall in love with your home. All of the tips and tricks to designing on a budget, to designing a rental home versus a forever home, to thinking about, you know, how to. How to save money as you're going through the design process. And then I tell my whole kind of entry story into design, which is a lot more detailed than I was able to get into here. But it's. It's kind of all encompassing and I'm so excited about it. And you can prepare pre order it on my website, which is www.gailyallixdesign.com.
- [46:27]
B
nice. Love it. Well, Gailey, this was a really fun chat. I really appreciated you coming on and sharing your story.
- [46:34]
A
Thank you. Thank you for having me on and thank you for the research. Clearly, you know what you're doing. And it's always so refreshing to talk to somebody who's actually done their due diligence, so I really appreciate it.
- [46:45]
B
That's Gaily Alex, the founder of Gaily Alex Design. Shopify Masters is produced by Hyacinth Parker, Alicia Clark and Schwang Esther Shan. Our engineers are Miku Bedlam and Matt Schwartz, and Rachel Reich is our senior content lead. I'm your host, Adam Lavinter. Come back every Tuesday and Thursday to catch a brand new episode of Shopify Masters. And be sure to check out our YouTube channel for those video interviews. Until next time, thanks for listening. Sam.