We were lucky to catch up with Jennie & Aaron Berger recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jennie & Aaron, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

The biggest risk we’ve ever taken was starting High Vibe Collective.

It began in 2017 as a passion for building and creating pieces for ourselves and friends. That carried through until 2019 when we decided to commit to the idea of this turning into a business. Through those years we sacrificed our free time and weekends to building custom pieces for clients. We both kept our full-time jobs the entire time and even held them through the pandemic. The beginning of 2021 is when we decided Aaron would quit his job as an Art Director and we would further pursue High Vibe as a business. At the time, I worked from home as a Sales Manager in the wholesale fashion industry. I split my time between my corporate job and HV (or as much as I could). At the end of 2021 I got laid off and that is officially when we decided to turn this into our full time business.

Deciding to leave our stable jobs to start a business building furniture is definitely the biggest risk we’ve taken thus far. Our lives changed in the blink of an eye and there were a lot of adjustments that had to be made… and fast. We learned a lot about ourselves and each other. It’s been an incredible life changing event we would choose over and over again. It hasn’t always been easy but it’s been so fulfilling and something we’ve dreamt of for years. If you don’t take risks, you’ll never know your full potential.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

High Vibe Collective is a husband + wife duo specializing in a variety of projects from custom one-of-a-kind furniture to interior space planning and design. Our eclectic, elevated style infuses a little extra life and personality into any space. We are based in Southern California and have been designing and building since 2019.

We first gained a passion for woodworking, making furniture out of our backyard for ourselves and friends. Our business has since grown into interior projects as well as high-end custom made furniture and home decor. The fulfillment you get from building something with your hands is very special. It’s refreshing to create something that you can touch and feel that didn’t exist before.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

The biggest thing I can say is to stay authentic to who you are and what works for you. Social media changes daily and it’s impossible to keep up with the hottest and latest trends (especially as you get older lol). The one thing you can do is be consistent with who you are and what you’re trying to portray.

Since we’re a husband and wife business, and we’re always together, our social media is very work + personal life driven. Our pieces are high-end so we want our audience to really see and understand what goes into creating them. If you follow us, you’ll also see a lot of our life at home. We want people to know who we are and truly know who they are supporting. We want it to feel personal.

The bottom line is, you have to figure out what does work for you. Stressing over trying to keep up with the “new and hip” features of social media will just drive you crazy. Just like everything else in life, be passionate and stay true to who you are. If you don’t believe it, no one else will.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

When the pandemic hit there was a huge push for consumers to support small and local businesses. In 2020 we started making small runs of home decor and we were gaining a lot of momentum. We wanted our product to be obtainable for anyone, not just customers who wanted custom furniture. We would sell through everything we made. We were participating in as many local markets as we could and we were having great success. Towards the end of 2021 we started seeing sales slow down and by mid 2022 saw a huge decline in the market. Consumers were not shopping like they were before and the traffic at local markets died.

We quickly had to adjust how were going to bring in new income. During that time we shifted back to focusing on our custom furniture as well as interior design projects. We ended up having our best year to date because of that. It’s all about rolling with the punches and most importantly staying positive and believing you can do it. Think outside the box and do not ever compare your business or success to anyone else.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.highvibecollective.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/highvibe_collective/
• Facebook: facebook.com/getonourvibe