We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Janna Coglizer & Megan Shepherd. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Janna Coglizer & Megan Shepherd below.

Janna & Megan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

Your home and the spaces around you impact your mood and perspective. Our mission is to create spaces that inspire joy. We absolutely love helping our clients create functional spaces that are welcoming and a place they want to be. Our most meaningful projects are the giveaways we do during Mental Health Awareness month. We have done 3 of these projects to date – 1) a large family with biological and adopted children where three of the children had to share a very small room. The oldest boy (12) was sharing a room with two baby brothers and we were able to create a space in the basement for him that was up to code (2 fire exits). He didn’t care about the stuff in the room, he was just so excited to have his own, new space. 2) We provided a kitchen update to a family that were victims in a car burglary turned violent shooting at their home. The husband went outside to stop them from breaking into his truck and they fired 20 bullets at his home with his wife and children sleeping. We were able to create a space for them in their kitchen that brought them joy. 3) Our most recent giveaway project was for a family where their middle child was diagnosed with Leukemia. She shares a room with her sister and all of their toys (we can all understand that) got out of hand. The space was also not set up for them to stay very organized, the closet was difficult to access and there was little lighting lighting in their room. We were able to open up their closet with better organization, a new dresser with organized dividers, can lights, a ceiling fan, and an updated mud room area. One thing we love about these projects is that we partner up with local contractors and other companies to make this happen. Love seeing our community coming together to bring others joy that don’t always have the resources to do it.

Janna & Megan, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

We both met in college and became friends right away. We both worked in software and consulting for 12 years and stayed very close – we have two kiddos that are two weeks apart. In 2017, Megan lost her brother to mental health. In his honor, they have created a non-profit organized, Carl’s Cause, to raise awareness, stop the stigma and help provide resources to those that are struggling. During covid we would go on walks and talk about all of our ideas and how we want more purpose behind what we do. That is where our mission was created – we want to create spaces for people that inspire joy. Spaces they can call home and share with others. Spaces that function for their family. We both have remodeled several houses and I (Janna) built my home. We started out thinking that we would buy Airbnbs or VRBOs, remodel them, create super unique spaces to establish a portfolio. As we were searching for our first rental (during an awful time to be looking with little to no inventory) we launched our business. We invested in our brand, logo, website and started sharing who we are and what we are doing on social media. We immediately got business and were both able to leave our full time software careers 6-9 months later. We have been so busy ever since (completed 80+ projects since July 2021) and haven’t bought that rental house yet!

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

A good example of pivoting is when we thought we were going to buy rental properties (which we still want to do) and things changed quickly for us. Someone once told us say yes to everything the first year and be willing to pivot. And so we did! But now we are working on saying no, narrowing in on our niche and defining our future.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

The majority of our business comes from word of mouth and instagram. It is really important to us that we stay authentic and real on social media. We are more than a pretty picture and try to share the mess and the real behind our designs as well. We are not interested in paying for followers or exposure and want to earn our place. We find the most engagement when we get on stories and share – we are working on getting on there more, but that definitely takes time! We want our stories and grid to provide value to our community.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.midwestandco.co
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mid_westandco/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MidWestandCo

Image Credits
Laura Foote Photography A. Leigh Photo KC