We were lucky to catch up with Austin Black recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Austin, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

My parents impacted my life and career tremendously. As I was growing up, my parents were constantly doing all sorts of DIY projects, updating the house, painting, rearranging, and gardening, and I was part of the process as well. I never really wanted to play video games, play make-believe, or do anything that didn’t have a real, tangible and visible impact on my life. I was blessed to have parents that not only wanted to teach me how to do things with my hands, but let me call the shots when it came to redesigning my bedroom… which, of course, happened quite often. Without their support and guidance, none of my success would have been possible.

Austin, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

The main problem we aim to solve is multifaceted: how can we help our clients feel happy about how their outdated, sentimental family heirloom piece fits in with their own personal design aesthetic, and how can we be as sustainable as possible throughout that journey. We want to make sure that our clients can keep those items passed down from their grandma, and still have a modern, beautiful home that fits their style (and we love reusing over buying new whenever possible!).

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

One of the best things a person can do to support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem, which often gets overlooked, is to write reviews on Google. I have put very little effort into the SEO of my website, and yet I get lots of leads and inquiries every week for potential new clients. The reason is that I have quite a lot of five star google reviews. When a business has lots of reviews, Google will automatically push that business to the top of the search results over a business who has little to no reviews. So, if you have a favorite local artist, creative, or small business, go write them a review right now! It helps to spread the word and create success for that creative person much more than you would think.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The biggest lesson I had to unlearn is the idea of not being constantly in fight-or-flight mode, chasing every dollar that comes my way. For the first few years of business, I was living paycheck to paycheck, and I had little to no savings at all. I never had investors, and when I started the business I only had about $5,000 to my name. I’m happy to say my financial situation is much different now than it was then, but it was difficult to unlearn the idea of saying yes to projects that didn’t align with my vision just because someone was offering to pay me. There were countless jobs I took on early in my career that I would not do again, because at the end of the day I didn’t enjoy the task itself. I now remind myself that I created my business not so I could work for other people doing things that I don’t want to do, but to work for myself doing the things that I DO want to do. It is difficult to turn a client away when they need help and they have money in their hand, but if it doesn’t align with your vision, it actually hurts you in the long run because it takes that much longer to get back in alignment with your big-picture goals.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.styledbyaustin.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/styled.byaustin/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/styledbyaustin/

Image Credits
Styled by Austin