274: Business Inspiration for Your Design Firm

Michele Williams: Hello, my name is Michele, and you're listening to Profit is a Choice.

Joining me today is Colleen Bennett of CBB Design Firm and Mimosa Home. Colleen has had a varied career in design working worldwide, and today she's going to share some of her story and how she's created a unique experience for her clients maintaining profitability in the process.

Every day, empowered entrepreneurs are taking ownership of their company financial health and enjoying the rewards of reduced stress and more creativity. With my background as a financial software developer, owner of multiple businesses in the interior design industry, educator, and speaker, I coach women in the interior design industry to increase their profits, regain ownership of their bottom line, and to have fun again in their business. Welcome to Profit is a Choice.

Michele Williams: Hi Colleen. Welcome to the podcast.

Colleen Bute Bennett: Hi Michele. Thank you so much for having me on.

Michele Williams: Oh, it's a pleasure. I am excited to ask you questions. I've been looking over some of the information that we had before we got started, and you've done some really interesting things.

Colleen Bute Bennett: It's been, it's been a crazy life. We’ve done things, some things internationally, domestically, and been all over, and it's just been kind of a whirlwind, but you know, tried a bazillion things, made money, and lost money. So, I think that's how I would describe my life.

Michele Williams: That's awesome. Well, before we get into kind of dissecting some of those things and tracing, as they would say, what, chasing rabbits and going down some of those trails, I'd love for our listeners to hear just a little bit of your backstory. So, what was your first job? Where did you get started, and how did you get to where you are today?

Colleen Bute Bennett: Sure. Okay. So, I am an army brat. I grew up in the south, all around, you know, I would say North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, Colorado, New York. I've got a weird kind of dynamic with growing up around the United States, probably eastern Midwest. Ended up going to Wake Forest University, where I triple majored in politics, history, and Spanish. Thought I wanted to be a lawyer. That did not work out and ended up in the furniture industry where I got my first job as the international sales rep for Drexel Heritage, which is now, sadly, a bankrupt company, but an amazing company for furniture. My role was to travel to about 68 countries and handle retail, store design, and credit management, making sure products got from here to there. While I was in that role, people would say she's an interior designer and I'd be like, okay, and ended up organically becoming a commercial and residential interior designer around the world working with my stores, their designers, and their clients. I did that for about 14 years. But in the process of that, because I was traveling so much, I would be like Russia, I'd fly through, you know, Dubai, down to Sydney in a day. And it just got to the point of that's just not humanly possible. I speak fluent Spanish so, I moved to Costa Rica in 2006, with my boyfriend, now husband, where we started our first design center to the trade on the day Bear Stearns crashed, you know, the market fell, we thought, great day, let's do this. So, you know, we started with $6,000 and $150 grand in debt across from a donkey, a chicken, and a turkey, because that's all we could afford in Costa Rica.

Michele Williams: Wow.

Colleen Bute Bennett: Yeah, it was nuts. So that's how I started in this industry and ended up working on the president of the beer company down there's house and doing about 25 containers in my first year.

Michele Williams: That is amazing. I’m curious. So, remind me again what your three majors were.

Colleen Bute Bennett: Politics, history, and Spanish. I would say triple major in coffee talk in a foreign language.

Michele Williams: I love it, I love it. It's good. Well, I laugh because I went to college and got a degree in management information systems and administrative management, and I was going to go into law school and do the joint MBA and law degree. Then I got a job with my then-boyfriend, and we moved to Atlanta. And then I ended up getting married and decided I didn't really want to go back to college at that point, didn't want to do it again. So that dream kind of went on hold. Now my people around me in my life can tell you I can argue like a good lawyer. So, I’ve got that going. But I'm curious, what was the shift for you to sign on with Drexel Heritage when you were thinking you wanted, because those, those are very different than like going into sales. It is a little bit different than thinking you're going to do more history and politics.

Colleen Bute Bennett: I mean, at that point in time when I didn't want to be a lawyer, I really had no idea what I was going to do. I had signed up to be a financial advisor. I was not good at that. I  just clearly failed the test. It was like, okay, this is God's way of saying this is not happening.

Michele Williams: Not for you.

Colleen Bute Bennett: But, you know, it allowed me actually with Drexel and with international, I did use my history, I did use my politics.

Michele Williams: And you used your Spanish.

Colleen Bute Bennett: I was in so many different countries, but I had actually studied the history of Russia. So, when I came in, I knew the difference between who was in charge. You know, Brezhnev was in the 97, saw the architecture, and could speak their language, at least as far as politically and historically. So, when I was working on interior design, I could bring that together. I just realized I wasn't going to be. I couldn't sit behind a desk my whole life. I just was watching. I had worked in politics in England. I worked for a backbencher when I was an intern. And I had gone and seen how barristers were there. And I just was like, if this is my life, this is not fun. I want to travel the world; I want to do things. I want to be creative. And I just didn't see that really happening. It's just, yeah, kind of sad. You build this whole thing up. You have this brain of you being this corporate woman, and then you're like, that is not happening. That is not happening at all.

Michele Williams: Yeah. You know, it's so funny, I remember thinking as a young woman, well, first of all, I graduated college in the 80s, and at the time I came from a small town in South Carolina that I've mentioned before. I don't even know if there was an interior designer there. If there was, I never knew about it, never met them, never saw a store. I don’t even know if they exist. I don't even know if there's one there now. That's just not what was around me. I didn't even know it was an option. I think the world was so much more limited in what your options were back then or even knowing what was out there. Right. And so, you just kind of go along with what you think you're supposed to do or with the options that you even know to give yourself access to. That's what I think is so cool about sometimes just signing on to take some of these jobs. Even if it's not long-term what you want to do, you now have access to other things so that you can start to, if you will, cultivate the idea of what you want to do and what you want to become. I mean, it's a very small group, I think, Colleen, of people who really know what they want to do and stick with that one thing from the time they're 18 years old entering college. Like it's a small, small group.

Colleen Bute Bennett: Completely agree with you. I think only the people that I know are probably doctors. I think I was brought up with the thought process that, you know, the people that can make six figures to seven figures were just doctors and lawyers.

Michele Williams: Back in the day, that's about all that there was.

Colleen Bute Bennett: Or but had we actually understood that being an entrepreneur you could maybe achieve that or if you were a sales rep. So, a sales rep, I didn't realize made, you know, five to six figures. Had I known that maybe I would have gone into sales. Had I known sales could make you even more than a CEO or a COO, I would have pursued that way earlier because I have that ability to talk to people. But it was always, it was never talked about because you wanted to be the lawyer and the doctor, because it was like a status thing. And it's like, well, what makes the world go around is sales and entrepreneurship and all this other stuff that we don't talk about, that we're talking about now. I mean I graduated in 2004. We didn't talk about entrepreneurship. No one had those programs.

Michele Williams: There was no program in the 80s. And ah, I'll tell you, if I had to go back and do it again again today, I would be on the entrepreneurial track. I would go take those courses to learn what to do and how to do it. I read something the other day that like, by 2030, I want to say it was a high percentage, I don't even remember the number, but it was, it was well over 50% of people were going to be self-employed in some entrepreneurial adventure. And I thought, oh my gosh, that is so much higher when the only people that really did that when I was growing up were the small mom-and-pop kind of family-owned stores that had kind of been handed down, you know, generationally. But it wasn't new, let's just pop up a new store, let's just come up with a new idea. It just wasn't as common. And so, it's so nice to see your college that maybe it didn't lead you in the direction you thought. But like you said, you were able to use so many of the things, certainly the Spanish, but then just the politics, even to know that politics mattered in the region even if you didn't learn them in school. I understand there's a political aspect going into this country and I need to understand it. You knew enough to go look for it, to understand, you know, even culturally, what I should or shouldn't do or how I should act or what I should say. Is this a location where we're going to barter and haggle? Or is this one where you better give your one price? Because if you don't give the great price the first time, they're going to walk away. Like, there are nuances to business that show up all around the world that if we've only been in one place. That's why it's so interesting now when we have different cultures coming in primarily to the United States, and people are going, I don't know how to sell to that particular culture because I'm selling to culture A like, I would sell to culture B or to, you know, this particular people group. Like, I would do this people group. It's not working. And it's because there's a different dynamic in how they go through that process.

Colleen Bute Bennett: Exactly. Or how to ask for money, or how to say, this is how your invoice is, or here's how your credit is. Or like, when you receive a business card from in Asia, you take it by two hands, and you give it to them. Yeah, I had to know. Luckily, I studied politics because I sold the dictators and presidents. And I was meeting them, I was sitting there going, ah, that was Daniel Ortega from Nicaragua. Okay. Sandinista revolution. Anybody else remember that? You're like, hi, I'm the American who's going to be helping you today. Like, yeah, things that are crazy. And in this realm of, like, Drexel, you know, because of tariffs, because of margins, it wasn't a middle price point, it was a high price point. It was like, by the time you got to Brazil at 100% tax, that sofa is now 12 grand. It's not a $3,000, $6,000 sofa. It's expensive. So, the people you were dealing with were the super high echelons. And you would meet them, and it was so cool. You'd be like, I actually met that guy, I've read in a textbook, you know, like, he's still alive and kicking and he likes boucle. Yeah.

Michele Williams: Yeah. Isn't that crazy? I guess. I love that, I know that we're going a little off-topic with some of it, but my gosh, I just love how to me, it was like preparing you for a different thing. Because I always wondered about one of the things that I find so interesting about what you do And I may even say this word wrong. It says that you operate six interior design centers called Caducus Folium. I may have said that. Did I get it right?

Colleen Bute Bennett: Yes!

Michele Williams: I got it right. I took French, not Spanish. So that's the shock that I said that right. But tell us a little bit about that, because it's in what I'm looking at in my notes over here. Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua and Honduras. I've not been to any of those places. So, I mean, it's not on your average travel list to go to those places unless you care about the Spanish culture and all that. But tell us what that is because I have to believe that that came from all of the prior work that you've done.

Colleen Bute Bennett: Oh, so it did. So, catechism is actually Latin. My husband kind of butchered it. It's supposed to be caduceus, but it came out caducus. So, Caducus Folium actually means fallen leaf, which was a symbol of Drexel Heritage. It was a shell corporation. So, when you move to a foreign country, because you can't immediately have residency, you have to have a shell corporation and when you receive payment to pay yourself from there, you can pay yourself legally, legitimately, and do that. So, when I got my commissions from Drexel, that was how our company started. Now we were working with a dealer of mine down in Costa Rica who went defunct. Drexel was like, you need to make those numbers up. You were selling 150k in Costa Rica. We need to see those numbers. I'm like, isn't that a conflict of interest? They're like, no, set it up. Go. So, I had been working with just one company at that time and was like, okay, well then that allows me to open up to sell lamps, lighting, other stuff to make up for it to be kind of like a mini store. What we ended up doing is we were kind of like the Amazon of high-end furniture for international. Our main goal was to bring furniture, light, and anything you had in the house at the US Retail price point landed and delivered to the client. It was unheard of. We were like way in 2006 and we ordered everything off the Internet. We had no inventory. It was crazy. I mean, if I look back, I'm like, wow, how did we come up with this? My husband had been an MBA. Luckily at Wake, they had a small management program, which I'm so grateful for because it taught me Excel, PowerPoint, and all that stuff. If I hadn't learned that because they didn't teach any of that during my liberal arts education. I would have been screwed.

Michele Williams: Because that's the business. I mean that Microsoft Suite is really kind of the heartbeat of business for me. Most of us. Yeah.

Colleen Bute Bennett: I mean, I mean it that six weeks of just pure. I feel that was the best thing that had ever happened to me. So, what we ended up being was technically a logistics company. Caducus Folium is a part of Morgan Stewart. We were shipping things to a freight forwarder in Miami. It would take however long to wait to consolidate. By the time it got down to us, it was broken. So, then you're sitting there going I just waited six months for that sofa and you put a forklift through it like what? And just paid sales tax. 23% tax I'm never getting back and now we have to re-import this thing. I've just lost every margin I had. In order to eliminate that, we created a vertical kind of company. Morgan Stewart became our shipping hub. So, we started to build our own containers. I learned how to do pack a 20-foot container which takes 1000 cubes or a 40-foot container which takes 2000 cubes or a 40-foot high code cube which takes 2200 and which is the best port to ship it from and make sure that we're not shipping air. Like air is, that's dollars people don't understand. Like when you get a container and there's air, you've just lost everything.

Michele Williams: Right. Wow. Yeah.

Colleen Bute Bennett: So, we took our damage rate from 12% to 0.002% which was huge. So that's great. We learned how to ship containers. So, we went from 20 containers. I think we did 150 at one of our like crazy years. And so, you know that's generates the business. Because we did so well in Costa Rica, we were like looking at Nicaragua going well, I hear there's a lot of money there, but I don't see anybody selling anything there. So, we went to Nicaragua. We made a 6,000% profit, it was insane, off of our investment. Just, I mean right. You found niche markets. The reasons you haven't been there is because you know most people don't want to go to Honduras or because it's dangerous, but Honduras is awesome. Like Tegucigalpa is gorgeous. Flying into Ticonderoga not so much, the most dangerous airport in the world. Once you get there, I mean, you get to meet all these incredible people. And so it's learning. You would think they're all the same, but they're not. It's all different cultures. Like, you know, Nicaragua, they liked at that point in time more like golds and that type of stuff. In Costa Rica, it was more laid back. In Panama, it was much more formal. In Honduras, it was more formal. So, we had a track record. And every time I would open a new business, I would have a baby. I'm also a mom and a businessperson as well. So, I had my daughter and my second baby, I would say Caducus, in Nicaragua, at the same time, which was crazy, because, you know, also having to do all that and being an entrepreneur, you don't get off. So, like you give birth and you're like, I don't have a pregnancy time off. I'm going to be working that next day.

Michele Williams: But they did deliver in the United States, or did you deliver in Nicaragua?

Colleen Bute Bennett: I delivered actually in Costa Rica. So, my daughter is Costa Rican and US, so it was kind of cool. But, yeah, the next day, went to work and so we did well. I mean, we did very well. And then while we were doing all of this, we got phone calls from Curry and Company. We had phone calls from Arteriors and Visual Comfort, and then we got the big phone call from Ralph Lauren and E.J. Victor. So, they asked us to represent them. So not only was I representing Drexel Heritage, then I was also representing these companies. I mean, I flew up to New York, and all of a sudden I'm not only having a design trade center and a shipping company and a rep group, now I'm working for, you know, a Fortune 500 company, in major fashion, which was a really cool opportunity. I loved my time at Ralph, it was so fun. And I worked there for 11 years. So then, you know, you're starting to build within these companies, companies within themselves. Does that make sense? So, like, different.

Michele Williams: Absolutely, Absolutely.

Colleen Bute Bennett: All organically happening, which is cool. But at the same time, you're going. How many different classes in QuickBooks are we going to set up?

Michele Williams: Exactly. You know, yeah, this is definitely, not the route that most people take when they think I think I'd like to. All right, I'm just going to. I've known you for all of 30 minutes, but I'm going to venture out to say that if you had thought you wanted to be a designer in school, your path would have been so much more boring probably than if you had done the history and the politics and the Spanish and then letting it take you where it took you so that you could travel and have that kind of life. And I'm not saying that the life of a designer is boring by any stretch, but I'm saying that compared to the opportunity that you were afforded because of the education and the mindset and the drive that you've had, it took you in a very circuitous route all through the ins and outs of design at a completely different level than if you had had a focus of I want to do interior design.

Colleen Bute Bennett: Oh, for sure. I think I would have probably been a designer under a designer and I would have again, never left the office and then I had done. I think my manifestation of what I've always wanted to do is I always saw myself on a plane traveling. I didn't see what I was doing, but I knew I wanted to be doing that. I wanted to meet interesting people. I didn't want to do what the army was doing where you meet interesting people and kill them. I wanted to be meeting and having those conversations and engaging in business and doing business in foreign countries. And I think that was always what I really, truly my soul wanted. And it happened, which was really cool. But again, like, if I had done the normal route, I would again be bored out of my mind.

Michele Williams: I think it's cool though, even with the army background, you were used to picking up and moving and probably having to restart relationships and how to talk to people and how to, if you will, fit in quickly. How do I get in so that I'm not that person always on the outside? And that gives you that ability to kind of morph and recreate yourself and fine-tune yourself and know how to step into relationships that other people have cultivated since kindergarten that you're coming into in the eighth grade. Like all of those things. Because I gotta tell you, I never had a dream as a child of I think I'd love to see myself on a plane doing business in a foreign country. That was not a dream that I've ever had. I might go dream about it now, but it just wasn't for me. And I love that because it just shows that you did and are doing what you wanted and were called to do, even if you couldn't totally define it. I'm curious about this, though, Colleen. My brain is already clicking off on things like, there was a lot to gain but a whole lot to lose in this. How did you come up with the first set of seed? Like, when Drexel came back to you and said, okay, you've lost the sales over here because this other company is no longer doing what they're doing. You have got to go make it up. Did they give you any seed money to start this next thing? Probably not, right? I’m seeing your head for anybody listening.

Colleen Bute Bennett: Not at all.

Michele Williams: Hopefully, you had been paid really well as a salesperson. You've done really well. You're probably a top achiever. Did you just take some out of your savings and think, well, to save job A, I'll take 150 out of my savings to start company A so that I can keep job A. Like, that seems, like, really weird to me, but you did it.

Colleen Bute Bennett: It was so. My. My husband's actually a business genius. He is like, I got lucky. Let's just put it that way, you know, to give you an idea. Like, he and I, when we work together, we can create something out of nothing. Does that make sense? So, we had six grand. That's all we had. I had credit cards. He did not have credit cards. I use my credit cards. I was used to army brat, hey, we'll just pay it off later. It got really high and was like, ooh, that's a lot. It was just being comfortable with debt. And some people aren't comfortable with debt. You have to be comfortable with debt to be an entrepreneur because you can see that by XYZ, you're going to hit profitability. I mean, if you look at Amazon or any of these, they were in debt for how many years until they turned a profit? You have to be comfortable with debt. You have to understand that, but you also have to pay it off.

Michele Williams: It's a leveraged debt. That's the difference. It's a debt that you know that you're going to either, to your point, have to pay off, or you have built some type of a strategy, whether it's a formalized strategic plan or not, you've created a strategy that you know you're going to go hustle it to pay to use it. So, we're using it as leverage for the next thing, for sales, not just buying debt because we want something new in the house, and we feel like we need to have it right now. There are different types of debt here.

Colleen Bute Bennett: Right, exactly. So, you do that, and then, you know, when you get your big sales, you pay. I mean, we immediately paid it down. First, we had two projects at the same time. I remember one at that time was a million, and the other one was a million. Same year, same time. We had two competing clients. It was incredible. But we busted our butts. We bought from over 45 different companies. We put it all in Excel. He created this incredible formula that we used and could remanipulate with each country because we would say, here's the cost, we showed the client the markup, and here was the cube. The cube determines your shipping, this, your margin, and it would formulate it so that any member of our team could plug it in and we could grow. If that made sense, off of Excel.

Michele Williams: Right, right. So that one person's not sitting down manually calculating this every single time.

Colleen Bute Bennett: And you couldn't manipulate it. Now, I wasn't that great at Excel. He was a wizard.

Michele Williams: You probably locked down all the cells. So, here's what you can enter in. This is all you can enter. And then we're going to tell you what it's going to be.

Colleen Bute Bennett: It was never just me. It was a team effort. I mean, like, the two of us were able to just create all this. And then we had great people that we worked with, and we had great relationships, and we always networked. I mean, that was one of our things.

Michele Williams: The people that you hired, Colleen, were they local to the area you were selling in? And then did you also. In each of these areas, did you go in? I'm fascinated by this. Did you go in and, like, get office space?

Colleen Bute Bennett: Yeah, we have offices or had offices. Some of them we've started to close down just because of the Pandemic. And then Nicaragua had a revolution, so that died, but what I would do is I would find somebody who was very ingrained in society, and it would be a woman. And I would say, look, I will teach you everything because I am not an interior designer by trade, and if I can do it, you can do it. Because I honestly feel it's spatial awareness, taste, all of that. Things that cannot be taught. If you have that and you have those connectivities, you are set. So, we found those people, we paid them a very good wage, and then we allowed them to buy part of the company so that they had a vested interest. So, you know, you could be halfway around the world, and you knew that your business was being taken care of or sometimes being taken care of.

Michele Williams: They had that interest in making sure because they were going to be going to profit on the upside, but they're going to take the hit on the downside.

Colleen Bute Bennett: Yep. So at, you know, at one point in time, I think we had 50 women working for us around within all of our countries. When we went to High Point Market, we would have. I mean, people would be like, oh, my God, this is the Caducus girls and the Caducus teams. We had one guy in Columbia, we called him Caducus Boy. But we would come, and we had buying power. I mean, collectively, we had a big buying power, which allowed us then to buy more brands than you can find at, like, Furniture Land South or any of the big guys. I mean, I can buy anything that I want, just because I have that capability.

Michele Williams: But that's through years and years of buying and millions and millions of dollars of buying. I mean, I'm just pointing that out. That's not just because not that you're not special, because you're special, but now that you didn't just walk in and say, my name is Colleen, I wouldn't be able to buy anything. It is through years that you can. I just want the listeners to understand. It's been a lot of work to get to the point where you have the power to walk in to buy with a group. But it was from a lot of work.

Colleen Bute Bennett: In a way. Yes, yes, I agree. But also, there was nobody in Costa Rica, so there wasn't any competition. So, I could be like, absolutely, absolutely. You know what I'm saying?

Michele Williams: Location, location, location, location, location, location.

Colleen Bute Bennett: So, people like Nicaragua, we don't have anybody there. Sure, go ahead. How much do I have to buy? Because usually it is like a 15k opening, or like, we'll sell to you for a thousand. Like, sold. Do you know? I mean, those are the types of things when you're in that type of niche market. Like, I'm in Morganton, I'm in the furniture capital of the world, but no one buys from Morganton. So again, I'm in a weird little area that I can buy whatever I want because no one's ever sold in Morganton furniture. Does that make sense?

Michele Williams: Yes, yes, it does. All right, so I'm curious. What does it all look like today?

Colleen Bute Bennett: Okay, so the pandemic happens. The Ralph Lauren contract Went to a different vendor, went overseas. I did not go with that transition. I had moved back to the United States. So, we lived in Costa Rica from 2006 to 2012. My husband ended up becoming CEO of EJ Victor, and I ended up working my own operation and was doing the rep groups. I had my own rep team, I had my stores that I was running, and I was running the logistics. When Ralph went away, I kind of started to focus on maybe I should do something locally. Well, actually, when the Pandemic happened, I wasn't going to be traveling, so I was like, well, let's open another Caducus here in Morganton, but let's rebrand it because saying Caducus is not easy. And so, at first, it was Interior Design by Colleen Bennett, and then it became CBB design firm because it was just me at the time. And then we went to, I had two or three houses, and then I went from two to three houses to 150 houses, which I'm working on right now. And because of the ability with all the logistics that I've been able to do, I have a warehouse full where we have a procurement team now where we're able to, you know, make sure, again, logistics, getting it to and from, and delivered in one piece. So, we've grown and went from just doing interior design to 3D architecture. So, we started a 3D company in 2008, way back in Nicaragua, and continue that on 3D assets, all of that type of stuff. So, we've been into 3D technology for a very, very long time. So all the houses that we do are all in Sketchup, all in CAD, all the textures, all the finishes. So, while I was doing that and getting all these finishes, I said, I'm really tired of having to give other people money. I want to do this. So, I got into the flooring business, I got into the tile business. I have a kitchen and bath. We have an incredible kitchen and bath designer, and we now have that specialty. I now have an interior architecture specialty. I now have a construction materials specialty. And so, what happens is we have now created this one-stop shop for our clients. So instead of you running around to every single place, you're in one location, and we get your house done in four to six hours. Time, value, and money. That's what we have really become if that makes sense.

Michele Williams: So, then you can do more faster because you're right, you can do the 150 homes, which some people would be like, I only want to do like eight homes a year. But you can, and I'm not going to say churn, but you can move them through a pipeline. When it's very specialized. It's all in one location. You're not traveling around. You can pull a sample from here and a sample from here. See how everything fits together immediately.

Colleen Bute Bennett: Exactly.

Michele Williams: Have it, you know, 3D for you. So, you see the textures, you see the colors, you see all the things. Decision-making is just minimized. I mean, it's narrowed down significantly.

Colleen Bute Bennett: Exactly. So, we picked a warehouse. Right. I'm able to put a full kitchen in there. I have all the bells and whistles. We became the Cambria dealers. I have Cambria quartz, huge slabs in there. I've got Walker Zinger, I've got Daltile, I've got the gamut. And then we're going to be bringing, we have pillow windows, all that stuff. So, the client is actually able to touch, feel, do, and be done. And then what we offer is, we offer by the hour and then we charge 35% on top of wholesale and they see those numbers and they get us plus shipping tax. So, by the time it's done, you get 50 off and they see it. There are no lies. It's all transparent. I have not had a client (knock on wood) since 2000 argue or haggle with me about my pricing.

Michele Williams: Not one because it's so out front.

Colleen Bute Bennett: Right. We take them shopping at High Point Market. They go, they see the market, they sit to touch. They're more apt to buy higher-end products because they've seen it and say, okay, if I had gone to the store, that's nine grand, but you're telling me it's three. And I'm paying $34,000 sold. So instead of seeing it where you're seeing on a Wayfair, where they're giving probably the same price as I am, they're actually seeing the true value. Does that make sense?

Michele Williams: Yes.

Colleen Bute Bennett: So their value, what they're ordering, they're getting better pricing on their finishes. It's kind of like they're getting a better value with everything that they do. So, I tripled my ability to make a profit, if that makes sense, beforehand it was just furniture, that was it. But you don't control the sale of furniture. You control the sale with finishes. Because once you get into the finished department and the design department, you control every single aspect from there because you're dictating what's the tile, what's the budget, how much have you spent. Then you can then dictate, okay, let's work on this finish. Let's change this tile out and that will help us get the furniture we want down here. Then the client's able to have all that all in one stop.

Michele Williams: That's nice. Because they're able to move, like, if you will. Like, if you were to think about it as a spreadsheet, they can move up and down that spreadsheet. Not just stuck, where. I'm sorry you've made those selections, and now you've got to go all the way back through doing something because it doesn't align with the furniture that you want to put into the room and now the space looks off.

Colleen Bute Bennett: Exactly. And then because we have done this upfront, everything is upfront. Like, we have contractors who just work for us. Like, we have two contractors that were like, okay, you, you, let's go. And we don't have to go find them. It's already built-in. They've already been in the process. So, the budget is already established prior to execution, which is huge.

Michele Williams: So, then you don't start having overruns. Overruns that then turn around and come over here and bite you, and you can't do anything. And I, you know, I'm going to even go out on a limb here and say, my bet is you could even go higher than 35% as a markup. But because it is so in their face that they see every single thing, like, even a 50% markup from your buying power is less than what they're going to be able to get it if they go anywhere else. So, I'm just saying that because I don't want anybody hearing, oh, my gosh, she's only marking up 35% and start, like, freaking out. This is a whole process. But you're making money on every single thing. This is where I teach a class called Pricing Without Emotion and one of the things we talk about it is using levers to price. Sometimes you're pricing time, sometimes you're pricing product. I remember back in the day, designers did not charge for their time. They just marked everything up 100% that they sold. And then I saw times where they didn't mark it up at all, and they charged for their time. The beautiful thing is they're levers and we know what we need to make. So, you can go up and down, you can have a higher rate and a lower markup. A higher markup and a lower rate to get you higher and higher based on the market that you're in to get you what you need to make. But you still have to manage it regardless of how you price it. How many people do you have on your team right now?

Colleen Bute Bennett: We're about 13.

Michele Williams: Okay. Okay.

Colleen Bute Bennett: In the United States.

Michele Williams: Yeah. And so, for all of these, did you set them up as totally different business units or do you have them under the umbrella?

Colleen Bute Bennett: So, they're different classes.

Michele Williams: Okay.

Colleen Bute Bennett: Its own design and then kitchen and bath design hours. So we charge hours and that we're very about it. I'd have to say, like, that's our, that's our come on. It's making sure and getting our organization together. And that's me. I'm totally chaos. I'm gonna just be honest. We finally figured out a task in CRM that is like, it's working. You're starting to see things move. And I'm like, thank God CRM. And thank God task manager. Like woohoo. But yes. So, like kitchen and bath is its own delineation. Kitchen bath hours are its own delineation. Construction materials, construction material hours, architecture hours, design hours. Everything has a delineation. So that we can see, we are finally able this year to like, see exactly what's making money, what's not making money.

Michele Williams: Yep. And you can run that P&L by class and start to see it by each individual area.

Colleen Bute Bennett: Yes.

Michele Williams: I am also interested in. I know that you, you've got a family. So how many kids do you have?

Colleen Bute Bennett: I have three girls. Three girls have a 13-year-old going on 21. I have a 10-year-old who has the rarest form of genetic epilepsy in the world. I have spent multiple, probably 200 nights in the hospital with her.

Michele Williams: Wow.

Colleen Bute Bennett: She is my little, you know, the one that you butt heads with. That's one. And then I've got my little spitfire, Caroline. She is six. They’re all dynamic. They're all dynamic girls. They can all hold their own. It is not an easy morning in our house. Every morning, but yeah, so I'm a mom. I'm a mom to three girls.

Michele Williams: So, talk to us a little bit then, Colleen, because I know that the listeners are also probably wondering. You've built a lot of business. Like this isn't just a little. This is a lot of business with a lot of weight. And you've built it in multiple countries and then are really building it up in North Carolina. Also being a mom to three daughters and one with needs for health issues for the epilepsy and the hospital stays and that kind of thing. I know you delegate and I know you hire. We know that you've already shared that. How have you found, I'm not even going to call it balance but to create a rhythm that works for your life right now, to be able to do and to be as excited and knowledgeable about your business. Like I can hear the joy and the excitement. Anybody watching is going to be able to see it like there is there. But you also have that for your family. How are you merging all of that and creating a rhythm that feels healthy for you?

Colleen Bute Bennett: Well, I don't think I can say I'm the poster child for being healthy. Let's just be clear. I think I'm gonna have to say wine helps. I'd have to say I had to learn to delegate. I had to learn to let go. Because being the entrepreneur, it's like your baby, you have to let go. It's like your child, you have to let go. I have to say there is not a balance. There is intentionality. There is, I am going to try to show up and I'm going to disconnect from my phone and it finally happened this year because last year was craziness. But I try to make sure that my phone is flipped over on the dining table, that I am there, and I'm focused for my family. I am trying to make sure that I schedule in my kids' activities and I work around my schedule on that. I preschedule that so that I know I'm not booking a client then. And I think that has helped me. I try to get home on time, and I try to make sure we have dinner with our kids every night. That's a key, fundamental thing. And making sure that we get their homework done and trying to get that done. I keep saying the word try. Like I try. It's like, you know, there was one point in time to be very honest where I did not put my family first, where it was focusing on my business, and that really hurt my family. You know what I'm saying? To be honest.

Michele Williams: Yeah.

Colleen Bute Bennett: I think it's hard to be a business owner and a mom and a wife, you know, and yourself. And I think what had happened is I had allowed my ring like my business to be first, then my family, then my husband, and then me. Me was last. And I had to flip that over and I had to start off with, okay, protect this person so then I can then be a mom and be a wife. Because my health got very bad. Like I gained a lot of weight, I wasn't feeling good, and then you're not there, you're not tuned in, right?

Michele Williams: Sure.

Colleen Bute Bennett: So, I'd have to say I have started to do that. I think finally this year I've actually felt for the first time probably in 20 years that I'm actually able to be there. Like I'm going to show up today I'm going to be there at 4:00 for my kids or right before this meeting I was PAC president and was able to get an agenda and work on my kids' school. But I don't feel overwhelmed because I've scheduled it, right?

Michele Williams: Oh it does, and I think that's one of the reasons I didn't even call it balance because I don't even know what that means right anymore. But it's about rhythms and intentionality and seasons and you know, it's so funny. I remember I've done all the same kinds of things that you mentioned. Good health years, bad health years, bad choice years, all the things. I can remember when my sons were in high school, they were both in the drum line, which meant on football Fridays they were going to be on a field tapping and doing their drum line and we were going to be there. I was in a season of travel for work. I made a promise that I would be home by noon on Fridays so that I could have enough time to get home, get acclimated, and make it to the football field on Friday nights to be there with my kids because I knew I had a short window of time to do that. The minute they were done with that, they were off to college. I've never regretted that. But I do think it is a struggle for many of us that are driven in our businesses to find a healthy rhythm for our bodies in our lives. Mental health, spiritual health, emotional, all the things, and to keep the business going and to take care of a family. And so, you know, there can be some people listening here who are like, girl, it's all I can do to take two or three clients. Then do your two or three. Like there's no shame in the game if we have a large team or a small team. It's really about the intentionality of what we're trying to create for our family, for our life, and for our businesses. We're always in this space of trying to say, what fits? It's just like what fits in the room, what fits in my life, what fits in my calendar, what fits in my week, what fits in my day. But, when I make a decision that it's going to fit, I need to leave it alone. And like you said, actually show up and turn the phone over. And that creates that profitability of the relationship, right? That profitability of communication. My husband used to always ask me, why did the boys tell you all the things that they tell you? I said, because I'm home. It really wasn't because they liked me more than him. That wasn't it. It was that I picked them up after school or I was with them when they needed to decompress. Like, it was a timing issue, and I was the one that happened to be in front of them. If the roles had been reversed and I had worked outside of the home at that point and my husband had been there, they would totally have decompressed to him. It was its proximity, and it was the ability to listen and to hear. And so just creating rhythms to do that, whether it's a client, a vendor, an employee, or a child, it is really important.

Colleen Bute Bennett: I got very fortunate when I was at Ralph. I took my girls with me, so I took them to Australia, New Zealand. I took them to all my stores. It was important to me that, okay, if mom's gonna travel, you're coming with me. They're so comfortable on planes. They're like, passport, go. Let's go, let's move. I mean, I took my littlest to a factory in Mexico, and to this day, they still remember her. I went to David Jones, the biggest Bloomingdale's in Australia with my kids. You know, I mean, they got to see what mommy was doing. So it was like, oh, there are other cultures. And they immediately saw, you know, and that was lucky because I'm an entrepreneur. It's a blessing and a curse, right? When my daughter was dying, I wouldn't have been able to take off 21 days from work. I was able to sit at my computer and get what I needed done and fight the doctors and the nurses to make sure she got her medication or got her CT scan or got whatever she had to do to save her life. I wouldn't be able to do that if I was corporate. Do you know what I'm saying? So, like, those are times, or I wouldn't have been able to be able to sit with her when she's having her four-day EEGs, or do her genetic testing or learn all of that stuff or start the Epilepsy Foundation for North Carolina, you know, and do that because I was an entrepreneur. Or leave the Epilepsy Foundation of North Carolina because they didn't take the funds that we raised and give it back to North Carolina. They kept it for themselves. You know, like those types of things you learn.

Michele Williams: But it's about being present, to be able to do that. And you've created a business, the model that works for the rhythms of your family and affords you the opportunity to be where you want, slash need to be at any given time. I mean, that's really one of the reasons that we all are entrepreneurial anyway is we want to work in our own rhythm and under our own calendars, in a way that feels more right for us. I've been an entrepreneur, in business for myself for 25 years. I cannot even imagine. I would be a horrible employee. I would be terrible. Number one, I'd probably be working. And then number two, I'd be like, yeah, I need to take a break. I'm not coming in today. I want to go play with my grandchild or, you know, whatever. It just wouldn't work for me now. It's so funny how you. We get into those rhythms of doing it our own way and they work for us. So let me ask you this. As we get ready to wrap up, what's on the horizon for you next? Do you have any other big ideas that you're looking at? Because you're a woman of action.

Colleen Bute Bennett: I want to take my team and expand it like I did with Latin America. I'm getting right now the formulas and the concepts right. And I'm looking to take this to the next step. I want to be in B cities that are on Peripheral, that are like a Morganton throughout the Southeast, and start there. I have my own brand called Mimosa Home that we are developing. That’s where the kitchen and bath and all that stuff so that can be e-com. I want to create my own furniture, my own stuff that's all underneath that. It's our whole lifestyle brand if that makes sense. Yes, that has been my vision. I have an incredible team with a great culture where they accept chaos, but they also accept boundaries. We are allowed to tell each other, hey, I disagree with you and say, I disagree with you too. But there you keep moving forward, I think. It's not having yes men around you. Does that make sense?

Michele Williams: Yes. That's the worst.

Colleen Bute Bennett: We're formed now that I think we've got this kind of, we're working on getting these communications. So this year is cleaning up the chaos.

Michele Williams: Okay, recognized chaos isn't bad. That's a sign of creativity. It's disorganized chaos that causes the problem. I'll tell you this because you'll probably get a kick out of it. I had somebody offer me a job one time, a high-level position, and then they said to me, they said, I won't even try to do the accent because it would make it funny. But it was Michele, I like to be told yes, that was what they said to me. I started laughing and I said, you're hiring the wrong person, like you don't want me because I am not a yes person. I'm not going to tell you yes just to be yes. Like, if it's a good yes, I will tell you yes, but I'm going to tell you no. Like, don't hire me into a high executive role to just say yes. I thought they were kidding, but they weren't. But guess what? They went out of business. All their businesses kept failing. And the reason that their businesses kept failing was because she was such an idea person, but she was never a follow-through person and the ideas didn't always have legs and she wouldn't let anybody tell her that. So, she just kept spending money after money after money, starting and buying businesses that just kept collapsing around her. I finally realized, that because she always wanted to be told yes, she never wanted to have that iron that sharpens iron. You know, here's another, here's another position, or, that won't work, or here's what I see. There was no constructive criticism or comment even allowed. Especially when you've got a business like yours that is moving and growing and conceptually changing and shifting to have people who can, with the same vision in mind. Have a culture of being able to say, hold up, I don't think that's going to work, or could we do it this way? Or here's another option that just brings that in. I think that is so valuable, Colleen.

Colleen Bute Bennett: Well, you have you have to do that. I can be very strong. You know what I mean? But at the end of the day, when I see the reason from the person telling me no or very strongly telling me no, I'm like, huh? Huh? Darn. And I totally thought about that wrong. So, I need to go back to say, hey, I was wrong, and let's do it this way and you have to have an open mind.

Michele Williams: That's why we hire A players, because an A player will tell you no when it needs to be no. Because their goal is to save us and to work towards the same outcome.

Colleen Bute Bennett: Exactly.

Michele Williams: I love that. I love that. Well, thank you so much for sharing your journey. You've done some amazing things. It was so thought-provoking.

Colleen Bute Bennett: Same to you. I enjoy having this conversation with other women who I can talk with about business. You know, it's really important, that people hear that or hear that, you know, the capabilities that you can do from different facets of life. I think that's super important, and I'm so glad that you're putting that out into the world.

Michele Williams: Oh, thank you. Yeah. I love the idea that design can show up in so many different ways. You can reinvent certain things. Like, I don't know, it just feels like we're not as boxed in sometimes. We can get locked into our own little echo chamber of thinking that we're boxed into what we should do and how we should do it. And it's almost like you've taken design and given it wings. And I love that. Right? We can have wings that you can not only fly around or move around but just expand. There's an expansion conversation in just our ideas of how people buy and what they buy and how they move through a design process. And thank you for expanding our ideas around that. I appreciate it.

Colleen Bute Bennett: Well, thank you again for your time today.

Michele Williams: You're welcome. Where can people find you, Colleen? Where are you hanging out?

Colleen Bute Bennett: Sure. Yes, you can find me at cbbdesignfirm.com or on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, you name it, we're there, and also, Mimosa Home. That is our other brand name.

Michele Williams: Perfect. We'll put all that in the show notes.

Colleen Bute Bennett: All right.

Michele Williams: Thank you.

Colleen Bute Bennett: Thank you.

Michele Williams: Colleen, thank you so much for sharing your journey. And even though I don't currently do design, your story has just inspired me to think about my business with wings. What might it look like with expansion and more travel and just a different way to reimagine it? So, thank you for that.

If you, the listener, are looking to change your business or reimagine it and you need assistance, reach out. I would love to talk to you about it. We offer educational courses. We have a CFO2GO program for your financials to help you get a grasp on that. We of course do coaching and we have Metrique Solutions. We love to really focus where that strategy and financial plan intersects, so you can find out more by going to scarletthreadconsulting.com and to metriquesolutions.com. Remember, choose to be profitable in everything because profit doesn't happen by accident.

Profit is a Choice is proud to be part of the designnetwork.org where you can discover more design media reaching creative listeners. Thanks for listening and stay creative and business minded.