We were lucky to catch up with Leslie Carothers recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Leslie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.
The Story Of How I Got My First Client:
In 2007, I was the volunteer chair of WITHIT’s [ Women In The Home Industries Today ] national educational conference. [ See: https://www.furninfo.com/furniture-world-archives/7145 ]
At the time of the conference, my business was still focused on sales training for the retail sales associates and interior designers working inside retail furniture stores across the USA.
One of the sponsors of WITHIT’s conference that year was a division of Cargill [ the USA’s largest privately held company ] called BiOH Polyols.
This division of Cargill manufactured a soy polyol ingredient that replaced a portion of the oil based polyol ingredient used in flexible foam production. Their goal was to drive demand for this raw ingredient at both the consumer level and at the B2B level within the furniture and mattress industries,
Sponsoring and attending WITHIT’s conference gave BiOH Polyol’s Vice President at the time, Jessica Koster, the opportunity to create brand awareness for BiOH as well as to meet the women in executive positions within these two industries who attended the conference.
Fast forward to 2008. I moved to Minneapolis, where I pivoted my business to be the first in the country to offer social media marketing services to home furnishings related brands. Minneapolis is where Cargill is headquartered.
Shortly after moving to Minneapolis, I received a call from Jessica, inviting me to have lunch with her, ostensibly to welcome me to Minneapolis.
At that lunch, however, she told me that she was seeking to work with a social media agency alongside a traditional PR agency. At that time the two were still separated.
She offered me the opportunity to be Cargill’s BiOH Polyols social media agency of record and asked if I would be interested.
I was, as you can imagine, thrilled and shocked! It was all I could do to stay seated vs. stand up and jump up and down! Right at lunch, we worked out the financial details and an agreement was sent over the next day.
The opportunity to work with a division of the USA’s largest privately held company as my first client was one that was sent from above to let me know that I had made the right decision to pivot my business in this direction.
During the time we worked together, we planned and executed the USA’s first multi-brand influencer marketing program for any industry, and over the next 3 years, we achieved every objective BiOH Polyols had set out to achieve.
The moral of the story?
Volunteer in leadership positions.
You never know who is there, who is watching.
By volunteering, Jessica was able to witness first hand [without my knowledge] how I managed a team and the allocation of scarce resources to achieve WITHIT’s financial and brand awareness objectives, which, in turn, led her to think of me vs. another social media agency for this incredible opportunity that every other social media agency in the country at that time would have loved to have had.
Being the digital marketing agency of record for a division of the USA’s largest privately held company put my small business on the national map immediately and here I am, 21 years later, still loving what I do every single day.
Leslie, 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?
I believe that beauty heals us at the cellular level, and for that reason, I’ve devoted most of my life to either creating beauty for others, myself, or being of service in promoting those that do.
After an early career start working for Dun and Bradstreet and then in the worlds of real estate investment banking and investor relations, I switched careers.
For 16 years of my life, from age 30 – 46, I was an interior designer – 10 years for Roche Bobois and then 6 years for Cantoni. I designed many homes in the USA and Mexico and also helped build several fine art collections for my clients.
After 9/11, I decided to switch careers again and start my own business. At first, I was doing design based sales training for the designers and retail sales people working for brick and mortar furniture retailers around the country, but in 2008, I was done with the constant travel after losing my Dad to cancer, and shifted to start the first digital marketing agency for interior designers and home related brands, and have had that business, Savour Partnership, for the past 16 years now.
My business, Savour Partnership, is well known for creating innovative digital marketing and influencer marketing programs for major and emerging brands to help them reach their target market in exciting ways, faster, and that help them build their reputation as thought leaders.
Savour Partnership is also well known for building digital marketing strategies and executing on PR initiatives that bring national attention and financial opportunities to interior designers.
What makes my business unique is that I’ve worked professionally with every stakeholder in the furniture and design industry: luxury consumers, interior designers, kitchen and bath designers, major manufacturers, emerging manufacturers, software providers, tradeshows, publishers, brick and mortar retailers and ecomm only retailers. I have very deep relationships with many of these stakeholders now because of my work for them.
In addition, this experience has given me a deep knowledge of the needs of all stakeholders, which allows me to use my superpower of creatively connecting my clients, very quickly online, with the opportunities and people that matter to their success.
Five of the programs or initiatives I’ve created that I’m most proud of are:
1. The home furnishing industry’s first multi-brand influencer marketing program called *Experience Soy Style: Be In The KnOH* – a collaboration between past client, Cargill’s BiOH Polyols division, major retailer, Room and Board, and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
Read more about it here: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2009/10/13/soy-couches
2. Another multi-brand influencer marketing initiative for past client, Cargill’s BiOH Polyols division, called *Project UDesign* – a collaboration between BiOH, Century Furniture, Ultrasuede and the Savannah College of Art and Design.
Read more about it here: https://www.homeaccentstoday.com/people/scad-student-winner-of-project-udesign-contest-announced/
3. The publishing of Seasonal Living Magazine for past client, Seasonal Living. This was a beautiful 32 page lifestyle magazine that I conceptualized and co-edited with my company’s past Creative Director, Sam Henderson.
See a past issue here:
https://issuu.com/seasonallivingmagazine/docs/seasonal_living_magazine_summer_21
4. Being co-principal in the world’s first virtual designer showhouse for past client, boutique indoor/outdoor furniture manufacturer, Seasonal Living. This was a collaboration between 15 sponsoring brands and 11 interior designers that went live in Dec. of 2020.
See it here: https://www.seasonalliving.com/virtual-designer-showhouse/
5. Being Dallas Market Center’s Lightovation tradeshow partner for the world’s first Metaverse Lighting TrendHouse installation – a collaboration between myself, Annilee Waterman, the rendering artist responsible for the design, modeling and rendering of the TrendHouse and celebrity interior designer, Shay Geyer, that went live in January 2024.
See it here: https://dallasmarketcenter.com/metaverse-lighting-trendhouse.
Recently, I’ve also been very involved in AI and educating interior designers on how to use AI in their workflows.
Last year, I was given the opportunity to design a sink using Midjourney AI for the luxury kitchen, bath and lifestyle brand, Thompson.
This is the world’s first kitchen and bath product, designed in AI, that has been manufactured and brought to market. AILA, as the sink is named, has been made of solid copper and will debut in Thompson’s exhibitor space, N1677, at 9:30 am, Tuesday 2.27 at the National Kitchen and Bath Show in Las Vegas.
Read more about it here: https://thompsontraders.com/product-news/3957/
In addition to my daily work for my company’s clients, I also own a very active Facebook Group community for professional interior and kitchen and bath designers called *Design Wealth*. I’ve built this community now for 9 years and it’s a joyful, informative and supportive community of approximately 1600 of North America’s top interior designers.
We have lots of conversations about issues impacting the interior design industry and there are hundreds of tips in the Group to help everyone understand how to build traffic to their websites and blogs.
I’ve been blessed over these past 16 years with great clients and great opportunities and I am thankful and grateful for each and everyone.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
When you’re a solopreneur, you have to learn to be resilient. For 4 years, from 2008 to about 2012, I was the only agency doing digital marketing work for brands. I had the niche to myself.
But then social media caught on, and every traditional PR agency got involved. I had to pivot in order to not be swallowed by larger agencies, and that’s when I started connecting interior designers with the brands I’d been working with to create opportunities for them.
From that day to today, I’ve worked with both brands and individual interior design firms and that has allowed me to creatively connect my clients in ways that create wonderful opportunities for both of them.
Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
The first years of my business were very tough, financially, as I started it without any savings -which was a mistake in retrospect but also made it imperative that I work extremely hard to succeed. The initial capital for my business was provided by a $10,000 gift from my parents, and then I augmented that with an SBA loan a few years later, which I quickly paid back.
Contact Info:
- Website: savourpartnership.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lesliemcarothers
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/savourpartnership
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesliecarothers
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqXo09y8C6UccWErZLYQ–A
- Other: Please invite your readers to subscribe to my blog: https://www.savourpartnership.com/blog
Image Credits
Image credit: @AM2PMImages on all images of me in the black coat.