Inside Interior Design: The Entrepreneur Who Turns Spaces into Stories

You know, it's their home.
It becomes an intimate relationship because you are creating the space that they will spend more time in than anywhere else.
It's their environment.
Hi, I'm Ravozeri and welcome to the Entrepreneur Corner of How Much Can I Make.
If you're dreaming of starting your own business and looking for inspiration and ideas, you came to the right place.
We're going to hear all about the ups and downs of building a business from the ground up to an industry success.
So listen on.
So today we are with uh interior designer Brian Lytton, and we're gonna pick his brain and learn everything we can in a short time about how to become one.
So, Brian, thanks a lot for being here.
Nice to see you, Mara.
Let's start by telling us what got you into interior design.
Originally I was a photographer for many years.
Right.
And as we all know, everybody got a camera in their pocket now.
So it really squashed a lot of what drove photography business.
Right.
So all the small jobs are no longer there.
And I had a specialty as being a nude portrait photographer.
So still people call me for that, and I fortunately have a niche, and I think it's different because that's the kind of thing that's not being duplicated.
I was making people the subject of art to be on their walls.
So, how did you make the jump to interior design?
So there were a few aspects to it.
People would come over to my house, my apartment, they'd always comment on the left of style, my use of space, and my aesthetic.
So people were interested in kind of knowing how I did what I did in my space.
I actually had already begun dabbling in it.
You know, a friend who came over and needed help with her new apartment, and those were like my first little projects.
And then when I had a client come over for a nude, they came to my new apartment, which I had just finished the renovation and was starting to furnish, and she looked around and said, Did you just do this?
And I said, Yes.
She said, Our aesthetic is totally aligned, and I have three projects I'm working on right now that I'd really like your help with, and rattled them off.
That's how it started.
Yeah, and then I had those three projects to do, and we didn't even shoot the nudes until after we finished the project.
But then in 2014, really went the whole developing a business and a structure of a business that I could then operate as you know, Brian Leighton Inc.
because I wanted an umbrella name that if I was still going to be licensing artwork, I can do that.
You mean licensing your artwork to other places?
I had been licensing artwork to a poster publisher.
Okay, so I get a royalty on that kind of thing.
Okay.
I licensed artwork to TV sets and movie sets.
You had something on HBO, right?
I had a few things.
Uh Sex in the City, Girls, A Few Seasons of Power, the Amy Schumer movie, Train Wreck.
Oh, you did you have pictures of the city?
All the artwork in her apartment is mine.
Oh wow.
Yes.
That's good to know.
There's a picture of John Sena standing like naked holding a towel over his crotch, and right next to him on the wall is one of my photographs, and I always used to joke, how many people noticed the art on the wall in that scene?
That's a good one.
So wait, I want to back up a little bit.
I want to understand what is the difference between an interior designer and an interior decorator.
I came across this little statement, which designers work on space planning and architectural details and often collaborating, I don't think often, I think always, collaborating with a contractor on technical and functional issues.
Okay.
Decorators, on the other hand, focus on choosing furniture, fabrics, finishes.
Oh.
One is focused on how the space works and the aesthetics of it, and the other is really all about the appearance.
I think that being a designer encompasses all the things that a decorator does.
Okay.
It's just a bigger, yeah.
It's a bigger vision of bringing it together.
And then also it's navigating, getting the contractor to be able to execute what it is.
So you work closely with uh contractors, electricians, that kind of stuff.
Yes.
You tell them what to do, where to put receptacles, and that kind of thing.
Yes.
Or, you know, and depending on what level of plans we need, we can have an architect involved.
And some architects do soup to nuts and they deal with the architect and design.
I like to be very involved in all of that.
I want to be the one who is defining what the vision is going to be.
So give me a scenario.
A client comes to you and says, Listen, I I'm I want to renovate my house or my apartment.
How do you take it from there?
I meet with them and talk to them about what is their dream scenario.
Okay.
I will walk through the space based on some of the things that they've told me about how they want to live in the space, what they want their experience to be there.
Okay.
And I can say to them that I think if we do this here and move this here, that this the flow of the space is going to be much better.
Building a wall here is going to create a hallway, and then we can separate the two spaces.
A lot of it has to do with what the client's needs are.
I I mean, I can have my dream scenario of what I think it should be, but it I'm not the one living there in the end.
They're the one living there in the end.
So you really have to let go of the ego a little bit and let them, you know, have the input, but you need to elevate whatever it is that they think they want to have.
So what happens?
You talk to your client, and everything they want is so against what you believe and what you like.
What do you do?
Yeah, I mean, there are people that that want things that are not my taste, but I still will try and elevate what their idea is of the aesthetic.
There are people that come to me that, you know, just moved into the city and they've lived their suburban life for many years and they did their last projects on suburbia.
And I have to try and navigate them to you're in an urban environment now.
You're surrounded by things that are so much more current.
What I'll try and do is steer them to what the next phase of what their aesthetic or taste is.
And that's just your gut feeling, what the next phase would be.
You were just guessing.
Well, no, I mean, listen, we we live in a, you know, the market kind of dictates what it is that they're going to be shoving down our throats for the next five years.
You know, whether it's interesting.
Yeah.
I mean, somebody decides white boucle is the thing to have, and as you know, you see white boucle on everything.
I wouldn't let anybody buy anything white bouquet because number one, I don't love it.
And number two, it's white boucle practical.
It's like that nubby, sort of curly looking.
Oh, okay.
Um, but you see it everywhere, and it shows really well.
So people love the idea of like a white, fluffy looking couch in their space, but it's not practical.
I'm using this example because they've been shoving it down our throats for a few years now.
Wow.
And every year designers keep saying, Oh, this is gonna be the end, this is gonna be the end.
Because now you're looking in your Instagram feed and there's white boucle slippers, and there's white boucle, you know, little pillow accents.
And so once it's all over the place, you think that.
So you get an idea, you see the apartment, you see, you know what they want, you take them shopping with you?
Yes.
Usually I pre-shop or I have a pre-plan of what I think is going to work in each space.
So I'm not going out blind.
Sometimes you you know, the first day you're you almost feel like you're throwing darts at a wall.
Right.
Because you don't you haven't established a trust yet.
You know, after that first piece that they've agreed to comes in and they love it, then they trust you.
Okay.
So it's a much different experience after that.
But before that happens, you know, and you're taking them out, you're kind of getting a read for them.
And there are some people that can't visualize anything.
When they're sitting in a chair in a store that's filled with furniture, they can't necessarily envision that that swivel chair is the one swivel chair that's going to be sitting in their living room.
Right.
Do you use any kind of software?
So when she sits in that chair, you can put it in her room.
You know, there's certain software programs that you can do floor plans.
There's many, many, so many like that.
I don't I haven't found one that I'm like, this is it, this has changed my life.
Okay.
But I can also make a uh mood board that shows them this is the bed for the room, this is the nightstand, this is what the mirror is gonna be on the wall, this is gonna be, and I can just drag and drop images onto that page.
I prefer to be in the space, and then I can even put blue tape down and show them how the physical space so they can walk through the space and know where their furniture is gonna be.
How many years have you been doing this?
I started the business, the technical business, ten years ago, but I've been doing it for uh probably another two years before that.
So you didn't really have any formal education, it was mainly I mean I was self-taught as a photographer, right?
And I've always been entrepreneurial.
You know, in high school I had my own boat cleaning business.
I lived next to a marina.
I knew I was not going to be the kind of person that could go and do the same thing day in and day out.
How do you get your clients?
Every single one has been word of mouth repeats or referrals.
For ten years, that's amazing.
Very fortunate and lucky.
So if somebody has no experience, you suggest that they will do what you do?
Do family, friends gain some experience, or is there school to go to and there I mean there's definitely interior design school, and you can go to school, and I do think you can learn scale, you can learn software, you can learn color, and but you can't learn taste.
Right.
Yeah.
And you also the biggest thing that people don't realize in this business is there's three components.
One is you are it's about your aesthetic and your ability to execute that aesthetic to get to a finish line.
Okay.
Part two is you need to be a salesperson because then you have to sell the idea and the concept to someone who maybe had their idea set on one specific thing, and you have to take them out of their comfort zone, which leads me to part three, which is psychologist.
Because you have to navigate somebody.
You're dealing with, you know, it's their home.
It's a very it becomes an intimate relationship because you are creating the space that they will spend more time in than anywhere else.
It's their environment.
You have to sort of tap into their personality and what's gonna make them happy down the road, and what's gonna make them I don't want anybody to ever say, I can't believe that Brian made me buy that chair.
You know, it's a funny thing that other entrepreneurs that I interview, they say the same thing that you do.
You have to deal with sales, number one, and you have to know how to deal with people.
The thing that really struck me relatively early in this business is how many vendors that I buy furniture from who studied interior design.
Their goal was to be an interior designer in the end.
And they had one project or two projects, they couldn't deal with dealing with the clients.
Interesting.
It looks to me like it's a kind of job that's very hard to price.
How do you know when you walk into an apartment what to charge the people?
You know, some designers charge a flat fee.
Okay.
The percentage of the overall project.
Okay.
Okay, some designers charge an hourly and a commission.
Okay.
So you fit have an hourly fixed rate.
Okay.
You charge hourly for all your time up until they give you a credit card to pay for that specific item.
Oh, they give you your own credit card to spend the money.
I usually use my clients' credit cards because it's it's like a little bonus for them.
They get to accumulate the points and the miles and the whole thing.
Right.
They're usually it's a big expense when you're furnishing a home or an apartment.
So it's a nice little bonus for them.
Right.
I extend my trade pricing to them, which depending on the vendor, could be, I mean, sometimes it's as little as five percent, but I usually don't shop those vendors.
But it's usually 10% and it could be up to 50%.
That's a that's a discount the the players give you, and then you just give it to extend it to them.
Nice.
And then what I do is I charge a commission, it's a percentage, a set percentage that we agree on at the beginning of my contract, and they are charged a percentage of what the net pricing is on that item.
So I don't charge them the on the delivery or the tax, it's the net price of the city.
Oh, it's just the item.
Okay.
So that's what they're getting technically the discount on.
So nine out of ten times, my commission is absorbed in their discount.
So it doesn't make them feel like they're spending a lot more because they're utilizing my service.
Right.
And if you're somebody who is great at making decisions and you make a decision and you don't look back, you wind up being much more cost effective hourly.
But if you've seen something, and this has happened with clients several times, where you know the first thing that I show them is what I think is going to be the best solution always.
But it takes them a while to get there.
And I'll use an example.
Client wants to wallpaper their bedroom.
Okay.
And I show them exactly what I think is going to be the perfect wallpaper for them.
A, because it's durable aesthetically, it fits our palette and the genre of what we're going for, and it works great with the bed and the nightstands, and it's just gonna elevate the whole thing and make them feel like they spent twice as much money.
I like it, I like it.
Let's look at some other things, and then we're around the block and around the block, and we've seen another five or ten wallpapers.
Okay.
And now they've spent, I don't know, let's just say for argument's sake, they spent another three hours in terms of sourcing and then looking, and then I want to see it in relation to this, and I want to see it in relation to this, and then they come back to the original thing.
Yeah, so now they've spent money on three hours of time for getting the same thing that had they said yes to it initially, which most clients come back to the original plan.
Now, sometimes you're dealing with a committee.
So right the whole family?
Well, right now I'm dealing with a family apartment.
It's two generations, none of them live there.
It's an apartment in the city that they all use when they come into the city.
The family can say, I want to have a neutral palette, but the mother who did her place 30 years ago wants the same numbers from 30 years ago.
She wants, yeah, she likes French country, she wants French country.
But, you know, you have to find that bridge of what works.
For somebody that wants to get into the business, how much money can you make if you work alone?
And how much money can you make if you have a big company?
That's a way to grow.
I have a very good friend who has a very big architecture and design firm.
Okay.
And when my business was growing years ago, I said to him, Do you think that I should be expanding and hiring more people?
And he said, No.
It's not necessarily that you're going to make exponentially more money.
No, because you have to pay the people, you have to pay taxes over him, and that's the thing.
The health insurance and whatever else comes into play depending on how big you go.
I have the control over my business.
Fortunately, I can pick and choose who I want to work with.
First project out of COVID was one I had that was going in that was put on pause.
But that project, I knew there were some red flags when I was going in, but I thought this is gonna be a lucrative project.
It's a big renovation.
I'm gonna be making a percentage of the whole thing.
You don't have to be best friends with her, count her money on the way to the bank.
Like all the things that have been drilled into me for many, many years, and I just I was tortured.
I did not pay attention to the red flags going in.
I tried to fire her at some point during the process.
What would you consider a red flag, for example?
Uh, you know, like somebody who's like really nitpicky about stupid minutiae.
One day I showed up, she had chewed me out on the phone over something that I made a she was away, and the contractor told me there was some issue with like some subflooring.
I had him rip out an extra layer of the subflooring.
She was came home, saw a pile of wood in her kitchen, was like chewing me out.
I'm trying to explain to her.
Nobody wants to put good over bad, and then six months from now, you're telling me about cracked tile.
Like, right, you know, these are things that I know that you don't know, and they're things that the contractor has said to me that he does not want to be responsible for it if he doesn't do it the right way.
So at that point, I basically gave her all the paperwork involved with her project, and I said, You think you can do this better than I can?
I think you can take care of it from here.
I will help be a liaison with the contractor because I'm the one that got him on the job.
And if you want, I'll even get you another designer.
It was the pro it was a project that almost made me rethink, do I want to do this anymore?
And to the Everybody has a project like that.
What's the biggest mistake people do when they design their own place?
Scale.
They don't buy the right size rug for the room, they don't say they don't think about the relationship of the rug to the couch, and should the whole couch be on the rug?
Should the whole couch not be off the rug?
I think the biggest issue is scale.
I think people buy things thinking it's gonna fill out the room, and many people, like especially people that move from an apartment to a house, and they think, Oh, I'm gonna bring my furniture with me.
And then they get to the house and it's like the couch looks like a postage stamp in the living room.
So what happens in a case like this?
You come in and you tell them, no, no, no, this is all bad.
I say, how much like what do you love and we need to keep and work around?
And you know, because I listen, people get attached to certain things in their life.
Right.
If I think it's a hard no, I'm gonna be like, it's a hard no.
Or I'm like, we can repurpose that in that room over there, or that can go into our guest room as the bench in front of the bed.
I think you also have to think outside the box and reinvent what somebody has if they're attached to it.
It sounds to me there's many points of frustration in this business.
What's the biggest frustration that you could point your finger at?
Well, I'm a control freak, and when I have to deal with vendors who are late on a delivery or they deliver damaged goods, or you know, like I don't have any control over, you know third party, whatever.
Third party.
Some vendors you're like 50-50 that it's gonna come in and be a hundred percent perfect.
So here I am dealing with, you know, part of what you pay, get paid for what you're paying for, and the commission is me dealing with the problems.
Right.
Nice not to have to deal with the problems, right?
So most of the time it's fine.
But it's like when I'm putting in that extra time and then I need to go back or send somebody back to deal with the delivery, like that eats into my bottom line.
Right.
Because I can't bill my client an extra hour or what I would need to pay somebody to go there to be there for a delivery because the vendor has an issue.
Walk me through a typical day.
Every day is different.
That's part of what I love about this.
Okay.
Every day is different.
I mean, I'll give you an example.
You know, two days ago I drove out to the Hamptons, and my client was there, and the contractor is there.
The bathrooms have all been demoed, they've been reframed out, the electrician is working on where to put the switches and the lights, and based on plans that we provided for them.
But I wanted to walk through and make sure that we're clear that this is the mirror that's going here, and I want the light fixture vertically centered on the mirror, all these little details that come into play.
And it was very important for me to meet with him at this stage before he goes further, because I hate asking somebody to redo something that they've done.
Right.
You know, who ends up eating it in the end.
It's the contractor is gonna eat it or the client is gonna eat it.
And I don't want to be the one that's blamed on either end for that happening.
Right.
What would you say the most important skill for somebody who wants to get into the business?
Well, I think you have to have an eye.
You have to kind of have the eye for seeing certain things, and then you have to have the ability to envision them together in the space and how the whole thing is going to flush out.
And at the same time, in the back of your head, you're like functionality, and you're thinking they want this room to be multifunctional.
They want to be able to have a card game in there, they want to also be able to have it as where the family hangs out on a holiday and overflow from that other living space.
You work mostly with women, right?
The women usually do the Yeah.
I mean, it depends on the client.
You know, I mean, I've had a few divorced dads.
They're like moved out of the house, have an apartment, want to furnish the whole apartment.
I have lots of families.
Some husbands want to be more involved, and some husbands are like it's divide and conquer.
My sweet spot is, you know, like I do work with women over 40.
I would say 40 to you know, 75 or 80.
But uh who have means and have a taste level, but maybe don't know how to explore.
How do you keep up with trends, with new technologies, with new things for the home?
You know, there's a newsletter that I read every day, it gets sent to me in the morning.
It's usually the first thing that I look at when I open email.
And I'm always trying to explore and see what the new things are, or there are events in showrooms.
They have you come to events to see what the new products are.
You know, you go to ICFF to the trade show at Jacob Javits and see all these different vendors in one space.
I was wondering if there is a possibility for another uh revenue stream by uh making a deal with vendors that if you buy from them you're gonna get a little bit of a kickback, let's say.
Some vendors do that.
That's how their trade program works.
If they're the vendor wants to give me a little bit of a kickback to keep me interested in coming because there are 18 other vendors I can buy the same thing from.
Right.
I'm not gonna say no.
Right.
Nobody would.
The main thing why I think clients come back to me and it's referrals and repeats, and is because I keep it fair.
The whole thing is about as I tell every client, I'm not looking to get rich off of you.
I'm looking to build a long-term relationship.
This isn't gonna be your last house.
Right?
And I hope that you buy a second home.
Right.
And then I hope you sell that first home and you buy something else.
I want you to always feel that you should come back to me because A, you trust me, B, you feel like our relationship is fair, right?
Three, I'm bringing knowledge to the table, and four, the aesthetic that you want, I can achieve and make the final product an elevated version of what your idea was or a better version of what your idea was.
What do you do to promote your work?
Instagram, social media, what do you do?
You know, I use Instagram.
Listen, I don't think I'm ever gonna get a client from an Instagram post.
Not even when you do before and after kind of thing.
A few of my vendors call me the king of the before and after.
I mean, part of it is I have the skill set of photography behind me.
Right.
So I can shoot a little video while I'm in there and make it look interesting enough that it's a story on Instagram or it's a reel.
And by tagging vendors, they then repost it.
So that is what helps sort of you know get your name maybe a little bit, you know, a little bit more acknowledgement of who you are and what you do and your aesthetic.
But you know, I have clients that are like, well, you know, I went to I have one still now.
She calls me every few weeks.
She's like, I'm still thinking about you, I'm still thinking about you.
She said, you know, but you know, I went to your Instagram and I went to your your website, and I'm not really like I just I I don't really know what you would do in my house.
I said, Well, we walked through your house and we talked about your house, and I know what your needs are, and I talked about how I would do things.
Um, and she was kind of like, Well, can I pay you to put a mood board together for me?
You know, I've had some friends that and I said, uh no.
I said, because then I'm giving you all my ideas.
Right.
And you're want to pay me for a few hours.
And when I start with clients, I have them give me a retainer.
And the retainer acts as a non-refundable design fee.
Okay.
So if they if I put my cards on the table and show them everything that I think we should be doing in their house, and they choose to cut bait and go execute on their own, I've at least been paid for my ideas.
Right.
If they continue the relationship with me, which has been a hundred percent of the time, it that retainer is applied to whatever it is that they spend with me.
So they don't lose anything.
Right.
What advice would you give somebody that want to get into the business?
Know that you're gonna have to navigate people.
If you're not somebody who's willing to, I don't want to say placate, but you you have to be somebody who has to who is diplomatic in conveying what you think they should be doing.
You have to be a salesperson without being salesy.
Right.
Or pushy.
Do you work mostly with residential or do you do commercials too?
I do mostly residential, interior and exterior.
So oh, an exterior.
Yeah, I do inside, outside of the house, pergola or a new entryway where uh, you know, we're changing the how the aesthetic of the whole front of the house looks.
Do you want to work on commercial spaces?
You know, I've done a few commercial projects.
One was uh, you know, it was a building down in Chinatown.
The managing agent called me.
They had gotten my name from one of my clients, and they wanted me to redesign the hallways and the lobbies.
It was great, a great project for me because they really needed me to design, they didn't need me to execute.
So I presented two plans to the building board, and then they went about and executed it.
And several months later I walked through to have a look at it, and it looked great.
The one I really enjoyed though was uh, you know, I had a client who I worked with who worked for uh Warner Music, and they asked me to come in and redesign some of the artist lounges and some of the common areas of Atlantic.
That's a great job.
Of Atlantic Records offices.
I bet you made a lot of money on that, right?
The way that that project worked was I was paid a monthly retainer during the course of the entire project, and it was an established set monthly retainer.
I didn't have to order anything, I didn't have to receive anything.
I chose all the furniture, I sourced all the furniture, I had the quotes put together, and then I would send it to one of the managers of the office, and they would deal with the Oh, that's a dream job.
It was great.
It was during COVID, they were nobody was working in the office.
Oh they had to figure out how they are gonna get people to come back to the office afterwards.
Uh-huh.
And if you think about the music industry, and I saw the how the artist lounges were, they were very geared to almost feeling like, you know, if you think about like a basement rec room, like that vibe of like listening to music on couches and layered rugs and things like that.
That was the vibe before.
So I went in, I changed like the elevator banks and put in like an ombre effect of wallpaper from floor to ceiling, and I had these painters come in and do like this ombre effect of paint on the elevator doors to tie into it.
So the idea was about bringing light into space.
It was the illusion of light into space.
And then when it came to the artist lounges, they really gave me a lot of freedom.
Their one artist lounge is where you know the artists sign their contracts.
You know, I know Bruno Mars is gonna be in there signing his next contract.
So I'm thinking, Bruno Mars is gonna want to have a picture taken in this room.
Right?
Of course.
So it's metallic couches.
You know, it's gotta be durable.
So it should be like a faux leather that can be wiped if somebody spills something in there.
I got these great little sort of stackable coffee tables that almost look like records, like silver and gold records.
Oh wow.
So it was cool that if somebody was sitting in there and somebody took a picture of them, it would feel like it was a music artist lounge.
Did you do you know if uh Bruno Mars actually did take a picture of them?
I mean, that's what they told me was gonna happen.
I don't know, I haven't seen, but then there was another artist lounge that was off of a performance space.
So all the furniture that was in there needs to be able to be dragged out and utilized within portion of the performance space.
So it had to have double purpose.
And even though there was a cabin in there, I made it so it was like a bar on wheels that they can turn around and then use as a serving station when they move everything out for people to go in and get a beverage or something.
Okay, so take this project, for example.
How long was the designing ideas in your head and how long the actual implementation?
Corporate.
So corporate is always longer than it really needs to be because everything is by committee.
Right.
And they make one decision and then they come back to you, and you do a presentation and then they come back to you, and then so and then you're sourcing the furniture.
So I would say that that project, soup to nuts, was probably like I want to say nine months.
Wow, you got paid for nine months for that.
Yeah.
That's very nice.
Yeah.
And meanwhile, you could still work on other clients.
Oh, yeah.
That's fantastic.
Yeah.
And also, in the end, they were really happy.
So, and it's cool, and you know, it's a great sort of feather in my cap.
You know, Atlantic Records hired me for their artist lounges.
I mean, that's pretty pretty great.
I've been fortunate in a lot of ways, and to me, that's one of them.
Yeah.
Let me ask you something very serious.
Don't you think AI can take some of your jobs away?
No.
Because how is AI going to do it?
Put a picture of their room, tell them the style that they want.
How are you gonna execute it?
Like it's one thing you can make a visual for somebody, right?
But you can't execute it.
Like if you say to AI, uh, show I want a living room that's all monochromatic, but has different levels of high and low furniture and blah blah blah blah blah, you know, they can create it in a visual, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to execute the scale of a table that's gonna fit perfectly at the end of a couch between the couch and the wall.
Yeah, not yet.
So right, not yet.
Well, you asked the question about what's out there now, and you know, that's that's part of it.
And also it's who's going to get it done because the reason a lot of people hire a designer is they don't want to be bothered.
Right.
Yeah.
I know.
I have friends that uh want to do it because they don't okay, they can be bothered.
It's a lot of work.
Right.
To go shopping, to do the source the stuff, you gotta choose it.
And also, an AI puts together a little a room for you, right?
And they say that that couch is gonna match that chair, and it's really gonna be the same colors that work together.
They call it, you know, pewter, and it shows up and it's really bronze, you know, or I mean, so I don't know if you can necessarily rely on AI.
What's the biggest reward of the job?
Seeing it come together in the end.
There are certain benchmark points in a project, especially a renovation.
First is the demo, and they rip everything out, and you see the guts of everything, and then they start reframing things, and all of a sudden there's like skylights where there weren't skylights, and this dark room announced this bright room, and there's light flooding in there, and that's like a wow, you know, and you start to see the physical vision of the space come together.
That you reach a point where things start to come in, and you're like, it's as good as I thought it was gonna be.
When you feel like you've achieved what you set out to do in the space, and you see it, it's so rewarding and it's so powerful.
And seeing somebody, and you know, I mean, my client that I was out to dinner with the other night, the husband is like, I love every room in my house.
Like, I go and I sit everywhere.
This is what I wanted.
Like it's a great thing.
When somebody tells you how happy they are in their home, you know, this project in the Hamptons the other day, we're walking through, and even though there's plastic up protecting like the living room and this room and that room, but before the contractor shows up, he says to me, you know, he's like, I love this house.
He's like, This house, you know, for me it symbolized something when I was able to buy this house.
He said, But what you've done to this house and how you've elevated everything for it to really be like comfortable, but a little bit of a wow, you know, is that's a huge compliment.
Huge.
Before we go, can you say the name of your website?
The name of my website is BrianLeighton Inc.com.
Very cool.
All right, thank you, Brian.
All right, good talking to you, Brian.
Yeah, and good luck with all your projects.
Thank you, thank you.
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