Could my story be your story?
Behind The Brand
MY BUSINESS BACKGROUND
MY HUMAN BACKGROUND
- Seriously Happy Homes: 2007-2023
- Mission: To help regular folks get happy at home.
- Services: Design-Only, with Flat-Fee pricing.
- Clients: North Seattle homeowners in homes 3000 SF and under.
- Revenue: $400k/year
- Team: 3 designers, 2 admin team members
- In The Media: I've been featured in Live Happy, Success Magazine, Bustle, and Seattle Refined, and recurring guest on TV's New Day Northwest, and spoken at Ignite Seattle & Town Hall Seattle.
- The Book: In 2016 I released Happy Starts at Home, a book on design psychology meant to help folks use their home to meet their goals, filled with exercises for reflection & action. 🙌
- Mentoring & Teaching: I'm on the board of Heritage Design School, a regular instructor with the NKBA, and served as a judge at KBIS.
- My career started with a divorce. Transforming my post-divorce home taught me the power of interior design, and gave me the courage to help other folks get happy at home, too.
- My degree was in Community & Environmental Planning. My CEP degree was part of why I wanted to design for smaller homes! 🏠
- I served in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua. Through the Peace Corps I learned we must ask great questions before we can offer answers!
- I taught ballroom dance. That's where I got the skills to help couples get on the same page! 💃 🕺
- I'm happily remarried and live in Paris with my hubby & fur-baby Murray. 🐈⬛ I love costume parties, cat videos, Laphroaig Scotch, and pretty much ALL French cheese. 🧀🇫🇷
- Oui, je parle un peu français. Si vous êtes à Paris faites-le-moi savoir! On peut prendre un café! ☕️
When I started my interior design biz in 2007 I had no clue about running a business, and no formal education in interior design.
I also had nothing to lose since I was coming out of a divorce and found myself "career-and-marriage-free."
What I did have was a talent with color and a skill for redesigning a space using what people already owned, along with the ability to help couples get on the same page thanks to a prior career teaching ballroom dance.
I also had a very clear idea of who I wanted to help as an interior designer, and it wasn't the uber-wealthy. I wanted to help regular folks have happier homes and to help people use the power of design to create happier lives. I believed I could focus on the "real-people" market and not only pay my bills, but have a thriving and rewarding career.
I didn’t follow the standard interior design path helping uber-wealthy people have wow-factor mansions. I stayed true to my passion, helping the 99%.
I spent a decade and a half helping regular people get happy at home through interior design, and I've had enough time and money left over to travel extensively, enjoy driving a shiny new Subaru (I know, soooo posh lol), and say 'yes!' when folks say "let's go out and do something fun!"
More importantly, my colleagues have looked at me as a leader in the industry, saying “Rebecca makes it okay to be something other than a “fancy” interior designer. In fact, she makes it pretty damn glamorous!”
The point? I paved my own happy path and succeeded (having ignored a lot of advice from well-meaning people to follow a more traditional approach to interior design.)