We were lucky to catch up with Genevieve Love Lake recently and have shared our conversation below.
Genevieve Love, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.
By the age of 40, I had settled into a successful realestate career (after multiple sort of successful previous careers), married an amazing partner and found myself back in Miami after 8 years of living in London and a few in NYC. All in all, things were what my younger self would have described as ” pretty darn good”, but for some reason I was constantly having issues with anxiety. My gut knew before I did that I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. Covid forced me to take a pause and reflect and thats exactly what I did. I also happened to have just finished renovating our house, which to my surprise turned out great and I really enjoyed the process. Fast forward to Covid calming and life re-starting and I just could not bring myself to get excited about the world I had taken a break from. A very talented interior designer friend of mine suggested we work together, and start a studio. I obviously thought it was a cool idea, but I had no technical skills, no design background, and more importantly in my mind… I didn’t go to school for design. As a matter of fact, I did not go to school for anything, I left high school and went straight into working whatever jobs I could to make ends meet. The suggestion that I should enter a world filled with educated creative geniuses and try to be successful in it seemed outrageous to me , and quite frankly, scary. My friend told me she could teach me everything I needed to know ( since my realestate back ground was in new development, I already had a leg up on the space planning and construction side of things). Within a week of letting people know of our plan, we had our first restaurant project. She gave me a crash course in process and we were off to the races. Our partnership was short lived, about six months in we decided we wanted different things and I found myself alone in a world that I still did not have much of a grasp on, but I had a taste of it and I saw what it could be and I was hooked. I didn’t care that I didn’t have the education, I didn’t care that I had no team and I didn’t care that I had no Idea what I was doing. My gut told me to keep going. I kept getting projects, I hired my brother to handle procurement and I found my first designer. Our team kept growing, the projects kept coming and getting more exciting. We were being recognized with awards and press and the sky was ( and is the limit). Fast forward to today, only four years later, we are a team of eight. We have hospitality and residential projects across the US and the Bahamas. My team has grown with the studio. We are collaborative, everyone has a seat at the table, I am in a position to share the opportunities for growth that come my way, with my team members. I have been able to take all of things that I learned from all of those previous semi-successful careers, and create something truly unique, special and successful. The people around me are happy. We are creatively and financially fulfilled ( well, financially fulfilled is an overstatement but I can see what lies ahead) . Most importantly, I took a risk at 40 years old that felt big and scary, and turned it into something magical. It’s becoming more magical as we grow. It’s still scary sometimes, but it feels right, so we keep pushing forward!!
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Love Lake Studio is an interior architecture and design studio based in Miami that crafts unique residential and hospitality projects throughout the US and abroad. We are currently a team of 8 that includes interior designers, architects, procurement agents, and lighting designers. My name is Genevieve Love Lake, I am the founder and principal of Love Lake Studio and my team are the creative geniuses that help bring everything to life.
We are unique to the design world in that we are not only residential designers, but we also consistently have hospitality projects in the works that really test us creatively – in the best of ways. Clients typically come to us because we don’t have a particular design style, we can help create something truly one-of-a- kind that represents our client’s personal taste. Our goal for residential projects is that the owner is reflected in the final design. If we have done our job right, it will feel unique and curated and no one would know a designer had been there, only that our client has an incredible eye!
As a studio we are young, only 4 years old, but we have been able to establish critical trust from our collaborators and clients that have helped us create a portfolio and an on-going pipeline that rivals many established firms. We are also super proud of the fact that we are 100% referral based. I finally caved and created a website last year, before that it was instagram and word of mouth!
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
I had to learn how to own a business, I had never done it before. Managing a team is difficult, I honestly was not prepared for how much time and energy would go into people management when I started the business.
These things are now pillars of our team management:
1. Being excited that we “get” to do this job. Im constantly reminding everyone, including myself how lucky we are that we get to wake up every morning and do something we are passionate about.
2. The Team is part of the process. I need everyone’s input. We are constantly tweaking our process. It’s important for me that my team understands that they are not just here to show up, do their tasks and leave. They are here to create a studio WITH me.
3. Speak up and be heard. I wanted everyone to have a seat at the table. To be heard and to feel like their contributions matter.
4. Feel they are being compensated fairly. This was a big one for me. I’m very open about where we are financially and where we are going. If Im having problems financially I need my team to know, if we are in a good place, they also need to know. I know what it feels like to walk into a company and work for a boss that is making millions off of your ideas and your work ethic, while you are struggling to pay rent. I hate corporate hierarchy in the traditional sense of keeping people hungry and dangling a carrot. If I’m making money and the company is making money, we are all making money. I will give and I have given 3 raises in one year because we grew so fast and the work behind that growth was the work of a team I felt was being under- paid. I dont want anyone waking up in the morning and feeling resentful, or worse, the anxiety of not being able to pay rent. You work your a** off for me, I do the same for you.
5. If you are the weakest link, you won’t last long. Keeping bad people for too long, or giving them too many chances doesn’t do them any favors and doesn’t help the team. It brings down the morale of the good employees that bring their A game every day.
6. Explore and learn. It is our job to take inspiration form the world around us. We get out of the office and learn more about our craft in the real world as often as possible. I encourage my team to travel and experience life.
Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?
This one is so recent it still stings. I did what everyone says not to do, I grew over night.
I had so many projects I kept hiring designers. Not accountants or admin, just people that could help me meet deadlines. I became the admin and the accountant and HR and project manager and client rep and…well you know how it goes. We had the big fancy studio, we had amazing projects, we had approachable fees because you now, building a portfolio means you say yes to everything!!
I had burn out, insane overhead, a massive team, a tired team, a bad book keeper (I was the bad book keeper) and a studio that was gorgeous but sucked every ounce of whatever profit we made straight out of the bank account. I had not been paying myself regularly, because I wanted to make sure everyone got paid and didn’t feel the pain I was going through.
I moved us out of that studio, moved us into the top floor of my house, raised our fees, said “no” to projects more than I said “yes”, tightened up the team, brought in proper bookkeeping and managed to turn its all around in 9 months.
My lord, I do not EVER want to go through that again.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://lovelakestudio.com
- Instagram: @lovvelakestudio
Image Credits
Project Photos -Kriss Tamburello
Team Photos- Sindy Perez